


Deeds (or To Be Worthy)

by elizamechanicka



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel 616, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Established Relationship, Humour, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, avenger!loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-07 04:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizamechanicka/pseuds/elizamechanicka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony must enter a tournament to win Loki's fair hand in beloved eternal matrimony. He's got some stiff competition, and limited time. </p><p>This story follows on from the wacky events of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/399661/chapters/657882">The Loki Problem</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story works as a sequel to my previous story, but if you haven't read that, no prob. Just know that Loki/Tony is established. This one is a little more action/adventure and drama than straight comedy. Onward!

Tony ran and felt the wind in his hair, and thought that this was what it meant to be free.

He felt unfettered in a way that he never had as a younger man with a reputation to build and a blinding, roaring, ravenous need to prove himself against his father. Now the awards had been won and the media convinced, and the perks of the high-life no longer mattered. Strange bedfellows and raunchy encounters in nightclubs did not lure as exciting or mysterious as they once had, and champagne networking parties and business exchanges that took place in strip-clubs had become work obligations rather than fun.

The change of feeling was Tony’s little secret, and he took pains to ensure no one noticed.

He had recently stopped trying to make himself look younger and focused instead on looking hot for the rest of his life. He had more than once been voted World’s Most Eligible Bachelor, and People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. He didn’t need to impress the world, the world was already impressed. He had done his adventure-seeking: gone swimming with sharks, tested extreme sports and jumped headlong out of planes. These days he took most of his thrills with the Avengers.

And now he also had Loki- _Trickster, Prince of Asgard, God of Chaos_ \- who provided him with challenges, mysteries and reasons to prove himself on almost an everyday basis.

He had taken to jogging outdoors. He hadn’t been having any wild beach parties lately (what with the easily-angered, magically-powerful boyfriend and all), and much of the time he’d been getting outside was when he was in his Iron Man suit. The fresh air and sunlight felt necessary, as did the little spells of alone-time. As much as he found himself enjoying it, sharing a bedroom with someone had swung the balance of ‘Tony-time’ off-kilter. It wasn’t that Loki was clingy, it was just that sharing a house with six other people meant for very little time to oneself.

Tony wasn’t crazy about exercise and needed to be shouted at and flogged into core-strength and weight-training, but running he actually liked. It was rhythmic and relaxing, and allowed him to switch off the constant whir of his brain.

He’d chosen a smallish local park that wasn’t much more than a swing-set or two, a bike path and a baseball pitch, and so far, touch wood, nobody had recognized him. He could watch ordinary people with their picnics and toddlers and ballgames and pretend to be one of them. It was a charming slice of normality in his otherwise extremely abnormal life.

Today he was making a conscious effort to clear his head. Loki had been sullen the night before and had refused to talk about whatever it was that was bothering him. He had seemed worried, and Tony found that to be a lot more upsetting than if he had just seemed angry. Tony knew that Loki kept secrets, and had made a decision early on to let it stay that way. But he hated not knowing when something seemed to be going on.

“You can talk to me, you know,” Tony had told him as they lay in bed together, trying to lean over far enough for Loki to see him, though the trickster was rolled on his side to face the wall. “I might even be able to help.”

“Perhaps,” Loki had noted quietly, but still had chosen not to.

Tony’s otherworldly boyfriend had taken the world by storm by switching from super-villain to super-hero overnight and joining the Avengers, a little over six months ago. Everyone wanted to know more about the Asgardian Trickster God who used sorcery as his weapon and had that dark, sexy thing going on.

Loki was a public enigma and would remain so for as long as he felt like it. He rarely spoke more than a word or two during interviews, and much of what he did say was vague or misleading. It just made the press focus on him all the more. Past-Tony would have been annoyed that someone else was siphoning off his limelight; instead he opened the papers and felt a giddy little tittering of pride.

Keeping their relationship out of the media hadn’t been as difficult as one may have supposed. The fact that there was so much buzz and speculation revolving around Loki at the moment meant that sneaking around was mandatory if they didn’t want to be hounded and followed everywhere they went.

So far they had been successful. They did go out together often enough, but Loki wasn’t one for public displays of affection unless the mood caught him, and Tony had been sneaking around behind the back of the press his entire life and was skilled at it. Their outings came across the same as when he went out for coffee with Steve or to the bars with Clint. There had only been one very close call.

After an intense mission, in the heat of a good win, Tony had seen no one around but his teammates and had impulsively pulled Loki in for a kiss. They were promptly interrupted by the sound of photographs snapping behind them. A reporter started shrieking and pleaded to know whether or not they were dating. Feeling cornered and seeing very few options, Tony was just about ready to snap out a ‘yes’ and deal with the consequences, but Loki had already started making out with Steve.

“You know nothing of Asgardian custom, do you, Mortal?” Loki called over his shoulder, lips smacking. Steve’s eyes were open and huge. “This is how we celebrate victory!”

He then went on to thoroughly kiss Clint, then Banner, then Natasha, then Thor. After that, he kissed the reporter and the camera-man, and bid them a very good day.

 

Making his way along the bike path, Tony was rounding on his third lap, making good time and burning calories. Having a boyfriend had also heightened his sense of vanity in what felt like a positive, productive way. When you were dating a God, you wanted to look good.

Tony was feeling so Zen that at first he didn’t notice the disturbance in the air above him some twenty feet ahead. A sizzling white-noise sound attracted his attention, then a shimmer in the air caught his eye.

All of a sudden there was a greenish blip in the atmosphere and, a few feet above Tony’s head, a wide dimensionless hole like the flipping on of a television screen seemed to open out of thin air: a rip in the temporal fabric. White light blazed from it, scalding Tony’s pupils, and then Loki came flying out at him like he’d been shot from a cannon.

The trickster hit the ground in a spray of grass and sod, barreling straight into Tony’s knees and taking Tony down with him. They rolled and skidded several feet and finally came to a halt on the baseball pitch.

Stunned, Tony lay where he was for a moment before turning his head and spitting out a mouthful of sand. He tried to push himself up on his elbows and failed. Loki was already standing dizzily, staggering to one side. He fell down again, and grabbed Tony by the arm.

Tony’s vision came into focus and he saw that Loki’s cape was shredded and stained with big dark patches and that his armor was thoroughly mangled. He looked like he’d been put through a blender. His face was streaked red and coated in dirt and he was panting and gasping for breath. His big green eyes were all pupils.

“ _Stark_ ,” Loki rasped, spitting a bright mouthful of blood.

People had stopped what they were doing and had started to watch. Children put down their Frisbees and parents snatched up their toddlers. A small crowd began to form around the baseball pitch to observe what might have been from their perspective some sort of bloody fight to the death between a teleporting Norse God and a jogger.

“FUCK!” Tony shouted, forgetting the toddlers. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

Intent on stopping the world from spinning, Loki grabbed Tony by the shoulders to steady himself. Then he yanked Tony’s shirt collar until they were both on their feet. His eyes rolled around in their sockets until finally settling on Tony’s. They glittered hot with panic.

“Loki!” Tony yelped in fright, reaching out for him.

Loki’s hand shot out and caught Tony by the wrist in a vice-like grip. He pried Tony’s fingers open and shoved something into them. It felt square and fuzzy and slightly rounded on top.

Tony’s mind spasmed. “Loki?”

Eyes burning holes in him, Loki grabbed Tony by the shoulders and shook him.

“ _Propose to me, Stark!_ ” he screamed. “NOW!”

For a second, Loki’s death-grip was the only thing that kept him from falling over again.

“What?” Tony blurted. He glanced down. Sure enough, a black ring box sat atop his palm. “Here? Like this? _Now?_ ”

“Yes, yes, now, do it now! Now! _Immediately!_ ”

The crowd around them had grown larger. Families were curiously staring, munching hot-dogs.

Loki gave Tony a quick sharp kick in the shin, and he fell to one knee. Tony’s open hand was shaking so hard that the box jumped out of it. Quick as a cat, Loki snapped it up and set it back where it had been, and opened the box himself. Then he slapped Tony once across the face.

“ _NOW!_ ”

The slap did the trick.

Obediently, not really comprehending the words that were tumbling out of his mouth, Tony held the box up and said,

“Marry me?”

Loki’s face smashed into his crushingly in a slimy, gritty, blood-flavoured kiss. Tony felt a crackle of magic pass between their lips.

Loki then took the ring from the box, pinched Tony’s fingers around it and slid it over his own finger.

“Yes,” he hissed out, with a heavy, satisfied sigh.

Tony’s knee was on an ant-hill. He wouldn’t notice the itch for some time. There was an unsure smatter of applause from their audience. Somewhere, somebody cheered.

Loki fell down to his knees next to Tony, panting. He coughed out another mouthful of blood and spat it into the dirt.

“That,” he gasped, “was very nearly a disaster.”

Tony had no idea what that meant.

Loki looked at him dizzily and grinned. He then began to hysterically laugh. The people watching had stopped clapping but kept looking. Some were taking pictures with their phones.

Tony’s brand new fiancée continued to cackle insanely like Tony hadn’t seen him do since his super-villain days. He threw his head back and held out his arms.

“ _HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT, DOOM!_ ” he sang to the sky.

Then Loki fell forward, turned faintly green and threw up down the front of his tunic.

In the distance, Tony could hear sirens.

Lifting Loki to his feet, getting covered in body fluids, Tony jogged them both away as quickly as he could.

And this was how Tony Stark, five times voted World’s Most Eligible Bachelor, came to be engaged.

*

Loki leaned his head unhappily against the car window.

“Please slow down,” he moaned, sounding woozy. Tony had been driving like a maniac, probably because he felt like he’d lost his mind somewhere back in the park, and might be being chased by the hounds of hell.

Tony eased off the accelerator and Loki relaxed enough to close his eyes, grimacing whenever they hit a pot-hole. He swayed a little and his head drooped.

“Hey!” Tony said, grabbing Loki’s arm reflexively and giving him a shake, “You gonna pass out on me?”

“I do hope so,” he heard Loki say softly.

They didn’t speak much for the rest of the journey, except when Loki asked him to pull over in order to vomit into a sewer grate. There was a bloody imprint on the window where his head had been before.

Loki seemed a bit sharper after that and started to chant quietly to himself in words Tony couldn’t understand. Tony could tell that the trickster was working spells to heal himself, which was overall good but Tony hated watching it. Unless Loki was sick with certain ailments or had depleted huge stores of his power, he was able to repair broken bones and impalements and most varieties of grievous bodily injury with his magic. Totally great of course, except that he’d done it for Tony once and _holy shit did it hurt_. Loki may have had a higher threshold for pain than he did, but it was still uncomfortable for Tony to think about.

Horns were honking at him to speed up, as Loki’s bones were cracking loudly and painfully back into place where he’d broken several of them. Tony ground his teeth at the sound and tried to focus on the road.

By the time they arrived back at the Avengers Mansion, the worst of Loki’s injuries were healed. He still limped on his way to the door and continued to look queasy. Once they were inside Tony helped yank him out of his blood-and-vomit spattered tunic, only to find the layer of clothing beneath it even bloodier. However, it was a relief to see that the skin under the tears in the fabric didn’t show even so much as a scratch. .

Tony lugged Loki over to the newish mocha suede couch in the living room, sat him down and brought him a facecloth and a glass of water. For himself, he filled a tumbler glass to the brim with scotch and slugged it down in one go while Loki wiped the blood from his face.

“Doom became angry,” Loki eventually explained.

“I can see that,” Tony answered grimly, refilling his tumbler.

“I did deal out a fair few shots of my own,” Loki snipped in his own defense.

“Not enough, by the looks of it.”

“Doom is also a sorcerer,” Loki justified, deepening into the couch. “It makes him harder for me to oppose, especially as I was not expecting to engage in violence.”

Tony threw back his glass and wiped his mouth. He poured another. “Speaking of engagements-”

He was cut short when Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye entered the room in costume. Banner was in his human form dressed in regular clothes, but all signs pointed to him having recently Hulked out.

“Hey there, Hot-lips,” Clint greeted Loki from across the room. “We just had a totally great victory. Wanna, y’know?”

“You guys did miss a heck of a mission,” Steve said pleasantly, ready to tell them all about it, but taking one look stopped him dead in his tracks. “Whoah. You okay, Loki? You don’t look so good.”

“It’s been a rough day,” Tony provided dryly. “Did I tell you we’re getting married?”

Steve’s eyes widened further. He took a moment to speak, and his voice came out cracking. “Oh. Congratulations?”

“No _way_!” Clint boomed sensationally. “Who’s gonna wear the dress?”

“ _He is!_ ” Tony pointed. Loki gave a little shrug.

Thor, God of Thunder, was notably absent, and Tony couldn’t help but wonder briefly at the whereabouts of Loki’s protective older brother.

“Loki has something he wants to say about it,” Tony offered, staring hard at the trickster.

Loki glared at him, but with a sigh he said, “Yes. I am afraid it may not be the most simple of joyous occasions.”

“Oh really?” snapped Tony.

“No.”

“I know why!” Steve butted in eagerly. “Tony, you’ve still got to perform all those Asgardian courting deeds, am I right?”

Steve, who had once upon a time worked diligently to complete half a dozen or so of these deeds, was the voice of experience. Tony remembered having had a look at the list of tasks he’d been given to accomplish and feeling exceedingly sorry for Steve. He’d also been under the assumption that the whole thing had been another one of Loki’s tricks.

Loki nodded. Tony’s eyes expanded. “Wait. Those are for real?”

“Of course,” Loki returned, as if it was obvious. “How else would one prove themselves deserving of royalty?”

“That list was like a hundred pages long!”

“It is written in large penmanship.”

“One of the jobs on there was _eating the heart of a Sea Monster!_ ”

“There is nothing to say that it cannot be cooked,” Loki said helpfully. “I am told it is not so bad. And they are less difficult to capture than you would think.”

“I AM NOT DOING THIS!”

Loki looked offended. “You are the one who proposed.”

Steve spoke over them. “Guys, please. Cool it. I think it sounds like time for a team meeting. Everyone go in the kitchen. I’ll find Thor.”

*

Steve took a while getting back, but when he did he was trailed by Thor. The usually amiable Thunder God wore a stern expression, and Tony could only assume that Steve had brought him up to speed.

“You might need some catching up, Thor,” Steve said, contradicting Tony’s guess as they both took seats around the table. “Loki and Tony are-”

“I know of this,” Thor said shortly, looking only at his brother. “I know of all of it.”

It was barely perceptible to the untrained eye, but to Tony, Loki looked immensely uncomfortable.

“How about you tell us what’s going on?” Tony drilled Loki impatiently.

Loki gave Tony a long look. Then, turning to the group he said, “It is true. In order to marry me, Stark must perform a variety of tasks to prove himself worthy. But I am afraid there is still more to it than that.”

At this Thor made an angry snorting sound and slammed the table with his fist, jouncing it into everyone’s stomachs.

After a deep breath, Loki began to explain.

“A year ago, when I was still inclined toward darker purposes, I did something rather rash,” he told them. “During a card game with some of my cohorts, after consuming far too much alcohol, I wagered myself in a contract.”

Tony blinked a few times.

“ _Wagered_ yourself? What do you mean, ' _wagered yourself_?’”

At the same time, Steve said,

“Which cohorts?”

“Namor, Mephisto and Doom,” Loki answered Steve first. To Tony he said, “I wagered my hand. Obviously.”

“Your hand? In _marriage?_ ”

“Correct.”

Tony felt tempted to pull out clumps of his own hair.

“And you just thought to tell me this NOW?”

“I had forgotten,” Loki sniffed, looking a bit hurt at Tony’s yelling. “I was extremely intoxicated at the time. The last I remember was retching over the card table and falling from my seat. I was very ill for days.”

“You forgot,” Tony muttered, pacing around, flapping his hands. “Understandable. Trivial detail.”

“Though I may have been upright and speaking, I was quite thoroughly unconscious at the time, I assure you,” Loki said tartly. “I retained no memory of the exchange until it emerged during today’s conversation with Doom.”

“Okay,” said Steve. “Let’s start there, then.”

Loki cleared his throat and regaled them his story.

“Yesterday I received a communication from Doom,” he began. “He said he wished to speak on matters of unfinished business. It seemed probable that I would have left loose ends with Doom, so I agreed to meet. This afternoon I travelled to Latveria, only to be knocked over the head from behind by a minion the moment I arrived.”

“This is what you get up to while I’m taking my afternoon jog?” Tony crowed, in utter despair.

Loki ignored him. “When I woke I was strapped to a table. Doom was taking my measurements, apparently for specific Latverian wedding attire. He has been busy this past year, and was quite convinced he had won me.”

“But he hadn’t?” Banner asked specifically.

Loki grinned this time. “Apparently, even in my state of drunkenness, I did manage to trick him. Half of the tasks on the list I had given him were false.”

“Loki!” Steve couldn’t help but scold.

Loki gave a small shrug. “Were he as smart as he thinks he is, he could have easily approached the All-father and asked to see the rightful list.”

“So _that’s_ why he kicked your ass,” Tony said a bit meanly. It would be worth a night on the couch for the infuriated look he received from Loki.

“As a matter of fact,” Loki spat back. “The moment he attacked me was when I told him about _you_.”

Steve interrupted them before a lovers’ tiff could break out.

“Loki, tell me more about this contract,” he requested. “What does it say about helping out the contestants?”

*

What the contract said exactly was this:

_‘I, Loki Laufeyson, do commit to wed the first suitor to pass all tests of Asgardian courting law if the deeds are done within twelve moons’ time. Permission to court must be granted by myself or by Odin All-father within up to the eleventh moon beforehand. Magic may not be used in the completion of any task. My own personal help or interference will not be allowed in the completion of tasks, by punishment of forfeit._

_Competitors must provide proof of their completion of deeds, and will be watched by the All-sight of Heimdall the Gate-keeper to prevent cheating. If more than one contender should complete all tasks within the allotted time, a duel shall take place to decide the victor.”_

 

There followed a short disclaimer waiving responsibility for death or dismemberment that should occur as a result of courting. At the bottom of the contract was Loki’s signature, in blood.

“’Within up to the eleventh moon’?,” Tony quoted. “So is that what the rush was about today? Did I just make the deadline?”

Loki nodded. “By a hair.”

“You wrote all this while you were drunk?” Tony dropped the paper and scowled.

Loki frowned at it ruefully. “In drink I am steady to a point, but prone to overconfidence.”

“I think stupidity is more like it!”

Steve held a hand up. “Let’s try and focus. The contract doesn’t say anything against helping out a contestant.”

“Except for Loki,” Bruce made sure to put in. “It says Loki can’t help or interfere on anyone’s behalf.”

“So no magic for us,” Natasha concluded with a frown.

“You can’t help me?” Tony said petulantly. “Can you even root for me?”

“Of course I will root for you. I may have to be subtle about it though.”

Steve tried to set the conversation back on course. “Okay, so no Loki. But the rest of us will help you. The others may have a head-start, but, with the five of us behind you. I think that could make a really big difference.”

From across the room, Thor said, “Four.”

All of them turned toward the Thunder God.

Steve’s face fell slightly. “Four? You… _don’t_ want to help?”

Thor looked uncomfortable. He crossed his big arms and looked down.

“I am sorry, friends, but I cannot join you in this,” he mumbled. “I, too, have entered in my claim.”

Tony watched Loki bubble for a second before boiling. Then the trickster’s face went purple, and his whole body began to tremble.

“You… You have done _WHAT?_ ”

Thor looked up snappishly and jutted his square chin.

“I am doing this to protect you, Loki! Your actions have been foolish! You have left me no choice!”

Loki leapt to his feet, stalking toward Thor and pointing a finger at him.

“NO! I refuse! I have accepted no offer from you! I do not consent!”

Thor remained dignified. “Father has given his permission, and that is as good as yours. Also,” Thor added, “He is most displeased with you.”

Loki seemed to be losing it.

“I will not have it, Thor! You _will_ rescind your claim!”

But Thor’s will was not to be budged.

“I will not yield here, brother,” he said, trying to be gentle. “This you must accept. I refuse to allow such fiends to have you without a fight.”

Loki pitched a hissy fit. He stamped his feet, and looked close to tears of frustration.

“ _No!_ No, no, no! I would prefer to marry Doom!”

Thor didn’t seem at all troubled. “You are just saying that. Do not fear, brother. I am here to defend your virtue. You will come to see.”

Tony decided to intervene before Loki either got himself thumped with Thor’s mythical hammer or went ahead and magically zapped his big brother off the face of the planet. Tony caught him by the elbow and pulled him to sit on the couch beside him.

“Shhhh, _calm_ , Loki, _calm_. Deep breaths,” Tony took one himself and rubbed Loki’s back and neck in a way that he hoped was soothing. “Think of a waterfall. Calm.”

Loki stopped shaking and didn’t lash out at him, but it was like stroking an angry cat; the claws could pop back out at any second. Mostly for Loki’s sake, Tony interjected.

“Thor, you know how Loki and I are together, right? If anyone’s gonna be stuck marrying him, it should probably be me.”

Thor smiled. “Do not worry, Tony Stark. I will end the marriage to my brother and return him to you once the proper two moons beyond the ceremony have passed.”

“That’s if you win,” Tony replied crisply, going off Thor’s cockiness a bit.

“Oh, I shall.”

“This is better,” Steve broke in. “With both of your hats in the ring we stand a better chance of wearing down the others. I think we need to come up with a plan. Let’s get to know our enemy.”

*

At the suggestion of Banner, they decided to make visual aids.

On a massive corkboard, they rolled out five long strips of blank paper and pinned on each a picture of a potential suitor, including Tony and Thor. Banner put on his glasses and took up a marker-pen, standing at the board while the rest of them sat.

“ _Doctor Doom_ ,” he called out first. They took down the relevant facts.

Victor Von Doom, Lord of Latveria, was basically a man-shaped body of metal coating a burned-out husk of flesh. His defining physical characteristic was the riveted metal mask that covered his face. He wore a green hooded cape and other accents of green. He spoke in the third person, and was known for constantly shaking his fist. The sorcerer was also the trickster’s most personal former accomplice.

“Doom would have me as his concubine,” fretted Loki, frantically chewing at his black fingernails. “He wishes to humiliate me.”

Namor, King of Atlantis, was next. The Sea King was suave with slicked black hair and pointy eyebrows, and preferred to be bare-legged and bare-chested. Also known as the Sub-Mariner, he was currently a member of the X-Men.

“He fights for the good guys; he can’t be all that bad,” Steve said, trying to stay upbeat.

Loki shook his head negatively. “That is what he wishes you to think.”

Mephisto was an overlord of Hel. He was red-skinned, rocked the Goth look and was often mistaken for Satan. He was known for his knack at capturing souls.

“He is beneath me,” Loki sneered in disgust. “His idea of villainy is to play practical jokes on Spider-Man.”

“I have a question,” said Clint, raising his hand unnecessarily, after the first round of notes had been taken. “No offense, but why are all these guys so desperate to marry you?”

Loki looked at the archer with grim impatience. As if it were perfectly obvious, he stated,

“To take over the Realms, of course.”

The more they listened, the more it seemed that Loki had a point. Each suitor already had his own throne in his own domain, and to marry a world-ruling King (and Loki technically was one) who was also second-in-line to the throne of Asgard would effectively mean bridging a number of gaps toward taking over the universe.

“And being that I have taken lodgings on Midgard, it is possible that any one of them would choose to start their takeover here,” Loki finished his argument, letting out a breath.

Bruce was tapping his marker-pen against his palm, looking off, thinking. “Okay,” he said. “Tony, try not to let this offend you; this is purely a hypothetical. But Loki, if you did have to, you know, marry one of them-?”

Loki shook his head.

“Doom would have me in chains at the foot of his throne,” he answered. “And by Latverian law, as his betrothed, I would have to oblige him in this at least three times a week.”

“Okay. Namor?”

“He would neglect me. And he is a cad.”

“Mephisto?”

“He is terrible in bed.”

Tony rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. “Honey? I think we really need to have a talk later.”

“It will not come to this!” Thor shouted, banging his fist on the only available surface: the wall. “I will not allow it! I will marry you, brother, if it is to be my last act!”

“Stop saying that, Thor!” Loki shrieked.

“Loki!” Steve said loudly before things could escalate. “I want a copy of that list of deeds, ASAP. The others have had a year and we’ve got a month. I think that we better get started.”


	2. Chapter 2

Straight off the bat, Tony managed to tick several boxes off of his list. He had already given Loki a golden ring, a thousand wild flowers (the beautifully landscaped garden out back apparently counted, as long as he mowed it down and flung the lot of it at Loki when the time came) and had presented him with twelve white swans (also handily available in the back yard).

Tony spent the first day and night of his contest in the outdoor Jacuzzi full of spa-quality mud. He wore his Iron Man suit (at least with the filtration system, he’d be able to pee if he needed to).

Spending twenty-four hours purifying himself this way was the easiest task on the list. He’d been encouraged to use the stationary time productively, so he used it to memorize the words and tune to an Asgardian love song, and to write Loki an epic poem.

“What rhymes with ‘divorce’?” Tony asked, after the third long hour.

Loki was sitting cross-legged by the edge of the hot tub, alternately reading and looking off silently at the sky. Tony complained at him and made demands for food, alcohol and different forms of entertainment. Every now and then he requested that the trickster scratch differently spotted itches on his face.

“I could join you if you like," Loki offered, more than once.

“No thanks. In fact, go to bed. You’re distracting me from writing my love poem.”

Loki just picked up his book and resumed reading it.

Dawn approached eventually. For at least an hour, neither of them had spoken. Loki had moved over to the lit-up swimming pool and was laid out on his stomach by it’s edge. His legs were crooked up behind him, and his fingers trailed over the blue water.

“This sucks,” Tony decided to say, referring to the overall situation.

“Mm. Yes,” Loki murmured. Light was beginning to seep from the edges of the tree line.

Time would be up in one hour. Tony watched Loki, whose hand hovered just above the surface of the water, creating ripples with magic.

He cleared his throat to regain Loki’s attention.

“Maybe you could come in here with me. If you want to,” he suggested, as if Loki hadn’t already asked to do so and been refused a dozen times over.

Thankfully, Loki gave no indication that it was in any way a surrender.

Loki removed his clothing, letting each layer fall at the side of the pool. He stood above Tony, silhouetted in the first pale light of day.

“Would you like to remove your armour as well?”

“Maybe,” Tony said grudgingly. “I guess.”

Loki knelt at the edge of the hot tub, so that Tony could no longer see him without craning his neck. But he felt his presence, and his cheekbone brushing against him.

“I know that I have put you in an undesirable position,” Loki whispered in his ear, “But fear not. I will find a way to make it right.”

It was hard to stay angry when Loki spoke softly that way. Tony nodded distantly.

“Okay,” he agreed. “Let’s get me naked.”

With a lot of sucking sounds and Loki’s help, Tony disentangled himself from his suit. His bare flesh slid into the mud, which was surprisingly warm and smooth.

Loki stepped in, wrapping his arms around Tony’s shoulders and pressing a lingering kiss to his throat. Then, he gave Tony his hand.

He sought under the mud until he found what he was looking for. His half-lidded eyes watched for reactions as he worked his clever fingers in increasing, deft motions. Tony provided gratified sounds and faces, and eventually a low, lengthy moan.

They were just getting out and putting towels on when Tony heard the door-handle, and saw Thor’s golden form appear on the other side of the glass.

Tony chanced a look at Loki and saw that the streaks of mud on his chest, shoulders, jaw and neck were all in the shape of finger-marks; Tony was certain his own appearance was similar. He thought it had to be pretty obvious what they’d been up to. But with Thor, you never could tell.

Thor stepped out onto the deck, wearing only a towel high around his muscled torso. He combed a hand through his blonde mane and looked awkwardly at his big bare feet.

“Friend Stark. If you would allow me to use this mud, I would be most grateful.”

“Sure. Knock yourself out,” Tony answered gruffly.

The mean little jealous voice in Tony’s subconscious was reacting to Thor’s (obviously good-hearted) intentions for Loki. It was telling him to feel a bit smug at the memory of what they’d just done in there.

Thor offered Loki a smile. “A most glorious morn, brother, is it not?”

Loki returned him a death-glare, and headed indoors.

Tony gave Thor the barest eye-flicker of sympathy and then followed in after the trickster.

A moment after they’d left, Natasha poked her head out the double-sided glass doors, which had been left open. At the sight of Thor dropping his towel, she turned back inside.

“I’m never going in that Jacuzzi again,” Tony heard her muttering to herself, down the other end of the hall.

*

Tony and Loki took a quick hot shower together, letting the mud rinse away. They kissed a lot but nothing else; they were both too tired. They discussed a short, naked power-nap. The very moment they had stepped out to dry off Tony’s phone rang. Loki sat at the edge of the bed toweling himself off, watching Tony waffle over whether or not to answer.

“Who is calling?” Loki asked.

Tony looked at the caller-ID and wished he hadn’t. Now he would have to pick up. He slid his thumb across the bar on the touch-screen to answer.

“Hey, Pep,” he greeted his assistant with as much cheer as he could muster. “Just got out of the shower. How ‘bout I call you back?”

“Wow. You’re awake _and_ showered? I must say, Mr. Stark, I am loving the new mature you!” Pepper Potts enthused. “No need to call back, I’m just checking in to remind you about the Jefferson meeting this afternoon. Two o’clock sharp. Go business casual by the way, you’re going to be on a boat.”

“Jefferson meeting,” Tony muttered to himself, then to Pepper, “No! No meeting, not today, no. Call them and cancel.”

Pepper laughed sharply. “You are joking, of course.”

“Pepper,” Tony rubbed his face. “Could we please, please, please make it another time? Pretty please, sugar on top? I am begging you here. On my hands and knees, begging.”

“No way. I’ve been arranging this deal for six months. You will go to this meeting.”

“Yes, I’m sure you have put a lot of effort into it, and I thank you for that. But this really is not my best day.”

He could hear Pepper chewing her lips. In a tight voice, she said,

“Explain quickly in three or fewer sentences. Because for me to reschedule this, it had better be so, so good.”

Tony made it two.

“Loki pimped himself out over an evil game of cards and now I have to marry him or be killed in the process of trying to. Otherwise he has to marry Doctor Doom.”

Across the phone-line was a deadly silence. It went on for quite a while.

“I’ll make the phone-call,” Pepper said at last. “But Tony? I think I hate your future husband.”

*

Steve was taking a break from life-coaching Tony through accomplishing the first leg of his list-relevant tasks and was sighing over the morning paper. Not for the first time this week, he looked depressed. He folded it over and threw it into the trash.

Steve out of all of them was the most bummed out about all the scandalous press they’d been receiving lately, mostly due to Loki and his evil tongue. Now it was expected of them to publicly make out at the end of each battle, and rumours of all-night orgies at Avengers HQ were running rampant in the trashier magazines.

Even the more respectable publications had been blasting them with the same sequential photo-set, under headlines like _‘Avengers Tongue Battle’_ and _‘The Sweet Kiss of Victory’_. Tony himself was becoming more and more irked at just how much Clint looked like he was enjoying himself in the photos.

“Maybe we could spend a little time out of the public eye if possible,” was Steve’s reluctant solution.

Since there weren’t any world takeovers going on of which they were currently aware, Tony’s list of deeds was now their top priority. The Avengers discussed it over breakfast.

“Weirdly enough I’m running out of things to do already,” Tony said, puckering his brow. “Or at least things I can do outside of a fantasy novel. I have to slay a dragon.”

“Ah. I have slain several,” Thor said through a crackling mouthful of Rice Krispies. “They do not make it easy.”

Tony flapped the list at Loki.

“I’m working on a clock here. Where am I supposed to find a dragon?”

“And a Centaur,” Steve said, eyes scanning down the page. “And a Sea Monster.”

Loki stared at him, setting down his teacup. He was perfectly expressionless for several seconds. Then he frowned and nodded.

“There is only one realm in which to complete the bulk of these tasks,” Loki decided swiftly. “We must away to Asgard.”

Clint jumped up from his chair, spilling his orange juice, and practically roared,

_“YEESSS!”_

*

Since a traumatizing experience he had endured at the mansion some months ago, SHIELD Director Nick Fury had been fairly incommunicado, giving most of his commands from on high via Special Agent Coulson or the fax-machine.

This made things somewhat easier to negotiate when the entire team requested the off-planet trip. Their compelling argument stated that it would keep them out of the press, and that the X-Men would be willing to fill in for them temporarily and take extra phone-calls if the world needed saving.

Coulson thought it was a great idea to let the scandal taper off and benevolently told them they’d earned a vacation. They would be able to keep in touch via Clint’s enchanted cell-phone (a long story), and had brought battery-packed phone chargers to keep it in good working order. If they were badly needed, they would know about it and be able to go back.

The Avengers were delivered via SHIELD chopper to their destination in upstate New York. Tony had his work cut out for him pretty quickly into the ride. Loki became terrified by the helicopter the moment it was in the air, and started to respond badly to some of their cargo.

Tony had taken three Iron Man suits with him; two collapsible, one not. They brought a portable lab’s worth of essential modern equipment, an assortment of weapons, a cage full of swans and twelve garden-refuse sacks full of flowers, to which Loki reacted by sneezing his head off the whole way there.

This made for a tense helicopter journey, as Loki had a bad track-record for losing control of his magic if he was feeling under the weather and had occasionally sneezed people into other realms and what not. There had been no such incidents as yet, but it gave them all high blood-pressure and put Loki in a bad mood.

Tony went and sat in the front with him while the others all cowered in a back corner. 

"You okay there?" He asked tentatively. Loki replied with a massive sneeze.

“I'll take that as a no," Tony concluded, handing him a napkin. "Guess I better not buy you flowers for your birthday then."

Loki pinched the napkin over his nose and gave Tony a watery-eyed glare. “You have chosen a bad time to attempt humour with me, Stark. Try again and I may fling you out the side of this flying horror without your suit on.”

Tony tutted him. “Don’t be an asshole, honey. Trying to help here.”

“Very well,” Loki sighed, “My apologies, this is really quite miserable. But it does not seem to be tampering with my magic, if that should provide any solace to our brave team.”

“You guys can come out now!” Tony called loudly.

“And so that there is no further confusion," Loki added, "I do not know the date of my birth. We immortals find numbering our years to be trivial. We celebrate our first twelve moons, and then it is forgotten.”

“No birthday?” Tony felt a little deflated. “Can I make one up?”

“I suppose.”

The helicopter set them down finally in the middle of an open field, where they gathered their suitcases and luggage together in a heap. The chopper flew off, and they stood in wait for the rainbow bridge.

Thor shouted at the sky for a while and was given the cold shoulder. He tried to reason with it, and was eventually answered. A luminous, spinning rainbow-hued plume shot down to earth and inhaled them.

They landed hard on the Bifrost bridge and were pelted with falling luggage. The swans honked angrily and one of the bags of flowers slid off into space. Dizzily they gathered themselves up under the impassive scrutiny of Heimdall the Gate-Keeper, who was as all-around unnerving in person as Tony had figured he’d be.

Thor’s legendary great friends The Warriors Three and the Lady Sif were waiting for them at the other end of the Bifrost bridge. They looked exactly as Thor had portrayed them in his many, many tales of home.

Fandrall was fair and overly groomed with a pointy moustache. Hogun was tall, dour and menacing. The third (unmistakably Volstagg the Voluminous, the most famous in Loki’s scathing descriptions of Thor’s friends) was morbidly obese and endlessly jolly. The Lady Sif was tall, perfectly-postured and quite attractive, if you liked the look of a woman who could definitely kick your ass.

Clint had been to Asgard once before and was well-liked and popular there, so when he and Thor bounded out to meet the Warriors, both were welcomed with great enthusiasm. The other Avengers went to introduce themselves and everything got very chatty.

Loki as usual was the exception. He was nodded to and greeted respectfully by the party, who excused themselves from his presence in short, over-polite haste. The trickster gave each of the Asgardians a dirty look, a direct spoken insult or both before stalking off toward the castle, leaving Tony to carry his luggage.

“Thor tells us that the Trickster has changed. I must confess not to see it,” the Lady Sif commented to Tony, picking up two enormous duffel bags with ease. “I hope that you and your comrades are watchful of him. He has always betrayed those he keeps closest.”

“Oh, he’s not so bad, really. Unless you try sharing a bed with him,” Tony winked at her conspiratorially. “His feet are always cold, and he snores.”

She looked taken aback, but not for long. It didn’t make her bashful.

“You are the one Thor calls Tony Stark, Iron Man?”

“That’s me. Intergalactically famous.”

Her face didn’t show any sign of amusement.

“He has told me of your relationship to Loki,” she said, as they approached the golden castle. “You should be most watchful out of all.”

*

Asgard, no doubt, was impressive.

The royal castle itself seemed to be made up entirely of luminous golden spires shaped like the pipes of a church-organ, and was sat at the top of sprawling fruit orchards and rolling green hills. Colorful prisms of light filled the evening sky. Inside, the painted ceilings were cavernous and every wall was gilt with intricate patterns and hung with lavish portraits and tapestries depicting epic scenes of battle. It was as Tony had envisioned it; he had always expected grandeur.

The rooms that weren’t attached to the royal chambers seemed to be made up largely of burnished stone and white marble, held up by pillars. There were long open corridors and narrow winding staircases that seemed to go on forever.

The Avengers were led to their quarters. They would be given rooms, refreshments, a chance to bathe and rest, and then would be invited to meet the King and Queen that night at a celebratory banquet.

Tony and Loki were led by two of the (armour-wearing, spear-holding) guards to Loki’s private chambers at the top of a spiral staircase. Tony couldn’t help but notice that one of the guards was pointing his spear in the direction of Loki’s spine as the trickster walked ahead of them, as if expecting him to whirl around suddenly and attack.

They were dropped off and the guards bowed to Loki and told them a maid would be along with refreshments to ease the stress of their journey. Then they were finally left alone.

Although Tony still had no idea how many hundreds or thousands of years old the trickster was (neither did Loki, apparently), Loki’s room spoke to him of the dwellings of a moody teenager. The dark magic angle wasn’t even trying for subtlety; any time Mom or Dad walked in they’d get an eyeful of evil-villain-in-progress.

Runes and totems had been strategically placed (probably not just for decoration), and all of the shelves were covered in dripping candelabras, spooky trinkets, animal bones and ancient-looking spell-books. This was probably all very useful if you were in the process of becoming an increasingly evil ultra-powerful sorcerer, but to Tony’s mind the walls might as well have been adorned with Emo-band posters.

“This is your childhood bedroom,” he stated, taking a good look around. He set down his suitcase and took a walk through the room. There was a large bed near the lone window, with long heavy gold curtains that could be drawn around it. The only other furniture was a wardrobe, two small tables and a few spindly chairs.

Loki’s posture stiffened. “I spent much of my childhood in another bedroom that was shared with Thor. I did not have my own quarters until we were both of age. But yes, it is mine.”

“This is so _you_ ,” Tony smiled. “I can totally imagine you sulking away in here being Goth.”

“These are my things, they reflect my interests. But I doubt I am Goth, whatever that means.”

“Oh, you are,” Tony picked up a chalice that looked like it had some rusty gunk at the bottom of it. Beside it was a deadly-looking curved knife. “You’re Tim Burton on wheels.”

After dropping their stuff off, Loki took Tony on a sneaky tour of a few places that he wasn’t supposed to be allowed to visit. The fact that they were supposed to be waiting around to be summoned before the King and Queen at some point in the near future, or that Heimdall was obviously watching them misbehave didn’t seem to bother Loki one jot.

Loki took him to the treasure trove, which was interesting because Tony had all but forgotten that money wasn’t just a concept or a series of numbers to be looked at occasionally. There were rolling pastures of golden coins, relics, gems, crowns and bejeweled swords. It was Uncle Scrooge’s money pit times a thousand.

“Whoah. Show me the money!” Tony whistled.

Loki didn’t get it.

“It is right there,” he said, pointing, annoyed.

Tony had started to feel bad for making so many pop-culture references, especially when Loki stopped looking annoyed about it and just looked a bit lost and confused. Tony was not very patient, but for Loki he would try.

“That’s a famous quote from _‘Jerry Maguire’_.” Tony explained. “It’s a movie with Tom Cruise in it.”

Loki had also forgotten who Tom Cruise was. He was trying, but not everything was sticking.

“You know, from _‘Mission Impossible’_. You liked that,” Tony carried on. “And _‘Legend’_. You liked that too.”

Loki paused to think. “Is he the one with the bald head and shrill voice that amuses me?”

“No, honey. That’s Danny DeVito.”

“Oh. I do not know then.”

“That’s okay,” Tony said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’re on your turf now. I’ll get to be the one who acts dumb about everything for a while.”

They sat in Idunn’s orchard and ate apples that didn’t even taste like apples; they tasted like gold (if that made any sense). Tony felt so refreshed after eating one that he ate two more for good measure. Loki carved his into slices with a sharp little knife that Tony hadn’t even known he carried with him, taking the skin off in spirals.

They watched the sun going down, and it was blissful. Tony thought it was nicer than Malibu, Hawaii, all of it. He could have stayed there all night beneath the stars.

But of course this was not to be. Their relaxing moment was interrupted by a voice booming from across the yard.

“Brother! At last I have found you! You must come now, and make haste!”

Guess who.

*

They had missed the banquet completely. The King and Queen were awaiting them in the throne-room, and apparently had been for a while.

The All-father, who was the most impressive and God-like figure that Tony would ever meet in real life, nodded his white beard to them and greeted Loki.

“My son,” was all he said, but a series of looks went on between his one eye and Loki’s as prelude to further conversation in private.

Frigga, Queen of Asgard, was an ethereal figure at Odin’s side. Her countenance was one of perfect poise, and she was ageless and lovely from the neatly piled curls on her head to the tips of her dainty feet. She graced Tony with a delicate smile, and nodded to Loki serenely.

Then the guards left, and shut the door behind them. Frigga all but pounced.

“My darling!” she started planting kisses all over the trickster’s face. “My Loki, you have returned to me! Oh, how I have missed you! And now you are getting married, how wonderful!”

Loki allowed himself to be accosted and examined and repeatedly kissed by his mother. Odin’s eye wandered. He appeared to be bottling an immense sigh.

“You must eat,” she gasped. “Look at how thin you are! You worry your mother terribly. Let us go to my chambers. We will have food brought, and you will introduce me to your future husband.”

With that, the Queen took Loki’s hand in one of hers and Tony’s in the other, and kissed them each on the cheek. “My heart is full of joy,” she sighed.

Loki glanced to Odin with a look of surprise. “Mother, you do know that the terms of my marriage are-”

A small crease formed in the All-father’s brow. He narrowed his eye.

“Yes, my love?” Frigga asked, smiling tenderly.

“I… will tell you later.”

*

“Hey, where’s your conjoined-twin?” Clint asked Tony the next morning, when he came down for the buffet-style breakfast.

The fact that Tony and Loki went everywhere together had become a running joke amongst their teammates. The detail had escaped Tony’s notice until they started being called the Gruesome Twosome by Clint. Other nicknames had caught on since. Tony couldn’t bring himself to care much; he felt a bit off these days when he didn’t have Loki around to glance at over things.

“He’s getting a spanking,” Tony said dryly. “Not the fun kind.”

The All-father was not happy. His youngest, whom he’d recently forgiven for various acts of intergalactic war and treachery, had misbehaved again, bringing shame once more on the House of Odin.

After breakfast, Tony went for a walk and found himself outside the throne-room. He’d honestly been feeling a bit bereft in this strange place without his conjoined-twin for company. He'd decided to do a bit of spying. Maybe it was a breach of some sort, but he figured it would help him to navigate the rocky seas of Loki’s mood later. In a way, it was research.

He could hear thunderous shouts echoing from inside the room where Loki was being chewed out royally by Odin. The doors were shut and not every sentence was clear, but stepping close, Tony caught the headlines.

Words and phrases like _‘shame’_ , _‘disappointed’_ , _‘foolish’_ , _‘selfish’_ , _‘your poor mother’_ , _‘your poor brother’_ , _‘how am I ever to trust ’_ and so on were easily picked out of the din. He didn’t hear Loki’s voice once.

After ten or so minutes of him standing there, the doors burst open in a blast of green light. Loki was escorted out by two wary-looking guards, who followed after him at a distance. Loki was moving at a brisk pace. His fists were clenched and his eyes were bright. He looked absolutely furious.

Tony stepped toward him compulsively. “Hey-”

Loki flashed a hand up, and Tony was slammed full-force against a mystical barrier as solid as cement. It was like walking face-first into a wall.

Loki kept going straight past him without slowing down. The invisible wall evaporated, but Loki’s body language was still practically hurling Tony away from him.

“Not now, Stark!” he barked, without turning to look at him. “I have things to do. As do you. Get on with it!”

And with that Loki teleported, confusing the guards.

Tony felt a sulk come on.

“Love you too!” he shouted at the air the guards were standing near.

This didn’t make him feel much better, but it did earn him a sympathetic look from the King of Asgard, on his way out of the throne-room.

*

For distraction, and really because he had to, Tony set about accomplishing the first of his many implausible deeds.

For all that they were humanoid-looking and spoke the King’s (Olde) English, the Asgardians were very alien in the fact that magic was so prevalent to them. After having taken a wrong turn along the way to the Enchanted Wood, Tony stopped and asked a farmer for directions. The gruff wave and landmark locations he received were blasé enough that he might have been being pointed to the nearest gas station.

He spent the rest of his afternoon deep in the heart of the Enchanted Wood, warbling into a goat-horn until a randy Centaur picked up on the practiced mating-call. Tony returned limping to the castle, having been kicked multiple times in the solar-plexus with a hoofed back-foot, but successfully carrying with him a Centaur’s harp as his trophy.

After being back-slapped by his fellow Avengers, he went to seek out Loki.

The trickster was sitting at the edge of the bed in his chambers, staring off into space. Tony plopped down next to him.

“Well, never mind about my day. I guess Dad’s pretty pissed off at you, huh?”

Loki gave a barely perceptible nod.

“He’ll get over it,” Tony put across his certainty. “You’ve done plenty worse than this before.”

Loki didn’t look at him, but raised an acknowledging eyebrow.

“Don’t be all mopey,” Tony smoothed a hand through Loki’s dark hair, then ruffled it up a little. “I know what will make you feel better.”

*

“Are you sure this guy _can_ be snuck up on?” Tony asked ten minutes later.

“He cannot see me if I do not wish it,” Loki replied. “You I can cloak as well.”

 *

The thing that cheered Loki up most when he was down (apart from the obvious other thing) was playing tricks on people. They ranged from insanely violent (Tony had been working to steer him away from these) to fairly standard pranks.

Once upon a time, when they’d first started dating, Tony had had trouble impressing Loki in the usual ways he had taken to charming his dates. He’d taken him to all the best restaurants and clubs and tropical beaches and watched him either look uncomfortable the whole time or glaze over with boredom. Feeling desperate for a positive reaction, he’d taken him to a joke shop, thinking that he might get a kick out of it. Loki had been so bowled over that Tony had gotten overexcited and splashed out on the lot.

In hindsight, Tony had no idea why he had thought that buying the God of Mischief an endless supply of socially acceptable torture devices had seemed like such a fabulous plan.

Loki had repaid him for his troubles that evening by secretively wearing a hand-buzzer to bed and offering him sexual favours (Loki thought screams were hilarious). Overnight he had also changed all of the pens in the house to ones with invisible or disappearing ink, sprinkled itching powder on everyone’s favorite chairs, and replaced all of their underwear with giant ruffle-edged polka-dotted bloomers.

“Good job getting him all riled up,” Steve had complained to Tony the next morning, shifting around uncomfortably. “Now I don’t have any underwear.”

“Oh, he’ll give them back. He’s just playing around.”

“Tony, I don't know if you noticed, but there's a bonfire burning in the backyard. Take a wild guess what's in there."

“Hey, I go commando all the time. It’s good for you. It’s freeing,” Tony said as blithely as possible to his teammates, who were all glowering at him and squirming.

“I would prefer my own garments. These are most uncomfortable,” Thor complained.

“What the hell is going on?!” Clint stormed down from upstairs. He was holding a plastic wrapper with a cardboard picture-label on it, which showed a cartoon rendering of the bloomers. “'Big Momma Undies’? Who did this? Where’s my underwear? Is this supposed to be funny?”

Then, on a related note, they discovered the itching powder.

Inevitably since then, Tony had succumbed to bad influence and was now an active participant in league with the God of Chaos. Around the house, they mainly conspired against Thor (Loki’s favourite) and Clint, who were easy, ever-satisfying targets. During times when they grew bored with these two, they had taken to prank-calling Nick Fury, informing him that he had won the lottery, and sending flowers and love-notes from a secret admirer.

 *

Tony drew in a long sip of mead to get ready.

The two of them were sitting behind some bushes not far from the Bifrost bridge, drinking. Tony had a large flask that he was swigging from, and Loki was refilling a chalice from a bottle of unknown green spirits.

They peeked around the side of the bushes at the unmoving form of Heimdall the All-Seer, whose gleaming muscled back was to them from where he stood, spear in hand, staring off into the cold majesty of space.

“Hmm,” Loki frowned a bit. “I believe he has already seen us.”

Tony shrugged, not too worried. “What’s he gonna do though? You’re Odin’s long-lost kid. It’s not like he can throw you off the Bifrost.”

“No. But you may not be so fortunate,” Loki reckoned. “He has very little sense of humour. And of course he will see it coming.”

Tony looked down at the bag they’d brought with them. It had been fairly heavy to carry and it would be disappointing to have done so if this was to be a wasted trip. And he still had yet to tease a genuine smile out of the trickster.

Tony drew Loki in for a sudden long kiss. Loki responded to it and stroked his fingers along Tony’s jaw and down the side of his throat. Tony held either side of Loki’s face, and pulled back breathlessly, without taking away his hands.

“Let’s do it anyway,” he said, grinning.

They tossed their booze aside and picked up the bagful of honey, flour, eggs and feathers, and ran full-speed down the rainbow bridge, reaching in with both hands.

Later, they wouldn’t even be able to hear Odin yelling at them because they were too busy laughing themselves sick.


	3. Chapter 3

 

With as much dignity and enthusiasm as the All-father could muster, an announcement was made to formally declare a tournament.

Five suitors would compete for the hand of Prince Loki, and the contest would be followed by a Royal Wedding.

The people of Asgard were quick to get in the spirit of things. A Royal Wedding had not taken place in more millennia than most of them were able to remember. The tournament was an excuse to pick favorites, observe sport, gamble and drink mead. Thor was the favored contender, followed by Doctor Doom. It also provided even more reason to discuss the scandal of Asgard’s recently returned second prince.

“They despise me,” Loki said simply, after they had finished watching the crowd’s cheers from the balcony behind Odin. “My true Jotun lineage is not even known to them for fear that they would storm the castle and burn me at the stake.”

“You don’t exactly make nice with them, either,” Tony said a bit disapprovingly. “Maybe if you didn’t treat everyone like morons all the time-”

Loki twisted his lip like he was sucking on something sour. “Remember that I lived here for many long years, and have had a changing attitude on the subject. And many of them are in fact morons.”

“I guess you could always just mind-control them into thinking you’re a nice guy,” Tony said, only half-joking.

Loki smiled thinly. “But I am not very nice. And I doubt that even my powers of persuasion would be enough to bewitch all of Asgard.”

“I think you’re very bewitching,” Tony whispered saucily, two feet away from Odin. “And I think you’re nice.”

“Flattery will not get you far, Stark.”

“Oh, please. I can think of a few places it’s gotten me. A few _very_ nice places.”

“Hmm. I suppose you are right. Tell me more flatteries. I am rather in the mood to be taken against a wall. Shall we go find one?”

Odin-Allfather, King of Asgard, was both trying and pretending not to listen.

*

After the wall, it was back to work.

With the help of some team-style begging, via a very begrudging Heimdall, the Avengers received progress reports on the other three evil candidates. All three were still pursuing Loki, at varying rates of speed and success.

Namor had been whittling away at his list the entire year, steadily if a bit lazily. He had left all of the most challenging tasks to last, of which there were still a good few.

Mephisto had only started showing any real effort within the past month or so. He seemed to work quickly though, and was miles ahead of Tony and Thor.

Most consistent was Doom, who had completed the fake list that Loki had given him in short order months ago. He was now powering through the real list with unwavering tenacity. The Latverian seemed hell-bent on winning the trickster as his bride.

All three were currently slipping in and out of Asgard, through some slippery magic that Doom had worked.

Tony decided it was time to do his homework. He took the list apart in his head and put it back together again. He categorized it by things he had done, things he could do pretty easily, and the more challenging tasks, which he organized into other groupings.

There were tasks that were really left-field, and others that sort of went together. He considered creating a section for deeds that would probably kill him, but, trying to stay positive, he placed them in the existing categories.

He was working with limited time. Considering the amount of things he hadn’t done yet, multi-tasking seemed the best approach.

Multiple tasks involved deep-sea diving, so Tony decided to get them all out of the way at once.

With the well-wishes of his teammates, Tony set out to sea.

*

Tony had to congratulate himself on the underwater settings he’d programmed into his Iron Man suit. The oxygen, propulsion and night-vision proved invaluable straight away, and he had to wonder how Thor was planning to navigate the cloudy nether regions of the deep in his dead-weight armour and cape.

Tony swam down as far as he could go, and amidst a dark swirl of plankton and seaweed, he collected the required twenty perfect pearls with hardly any effort at all. It started him off confident, but of course nothing could ever stay simple for long.

It took him ages to find a mermaid, and when he did it took him even longer to convince her to sing for him into a conch.

He then spent hours searching for the elusive Sea Monster without success, but did come across many sunken ships. He procured a bit of treasure, which was another job done.

At the end, he had a random chance encounter with Namor at the bottom of the ocean and gave him the finger, only to be chased back to the surface by every fish, mollusk, shark and mythical creature in the kingdom of Atlantis, including a very large Sea Monster.

“You owe me like a million sexual favours,” Tony told Loki later, showing him the shark-bite in his armour.

“Hmm. Perhaps,” Loki acknowledged as he eyed the jagged edges of the gaping hole. He stroked along it with his fingertip, and then looked up. “But you will only be permitted to start collecting them on our wedding night.”

That evening, after a dinner of roast Sea Monster heart (not bad, kind of like chicken), Tony heard a commotion at the other side of the banquet hall. Others in the hall were rising from their seats at the long tables to go over to the balconies and high windows to look at a sight on the horizon.

Tony fought for a spot at the front of the balcony and looked out.

Far in the distance, Thor was dragging a very dead dragon by its scaly neck over the hilltops, at a laboured but steady pace. When he caught sight of the watching crowd, he raised his hammer and bellowed victoriously, to wild applause and loud cheering.

“You know, that guy’s actually starting to piss me off,” Tony said to Loki over the happy din of the spectacle.

Loki’s expression and tone were perfectly toxic.

“Mm,” said the trickster. “Verily.”

*

“Mmm, these apples sure are good,” Tony said, chomping into one.

Since that first time in the orchard, he’d been eating a ton of them. There always seemed to be plenty around.

“Yes,” Loki nodded agreeably. “They are very nutritious.”

 

That afternoon Tony spent several hours on the floor of Loki’s bedroom, learning to play weird Asgardian musical instruments. He was teaching himself the tune to the wedding-song he’d memorized the words to back at the mansion. He found that he was pretty terrible at Jorvik panpipe, but not too bad on the cow-horn recorder. His attempts, no matter how pathetic, would at least tick two more boxes off his list.

“I really suck at this,” he said to Loki, who sat on the floor opposite, observing him.

Loki’s eyebrows were raised in near-surprise. “You are truly awful.”

“Yeah, well. Jorvik panpipe was never on my personal bucket-list,” Tony grumbled.

By the end of it he could just about manage the tune, if to an embarrassingly low level of proficiency. Tony was a man of many talents, but he’d never been musically inclined.

When they went downstairs they found Thor and Frigga at the dining table, which was laden with a large variety of non-food items. Frigga perked at the sight of Loki.

“Ah, it is very good you are here! Tell me my darling, do you prefer gold or silver for the tableware? Narrowing that down would make for a very good start.”

“I am fond of gold,” Thor expressed.

Loki’s mouth drew a thin line. “Silver.”

She held up two slightly different silver plates. “Is there a pattern you would like best? There are many to choose from.”

“Mother,” Loki sat down a few chairs away from the mountain of dishes and table-linens. “You know that it is likely I will marry a horrible fiend?”

Frigga gave a little grunt and head-shake. “It is still important to plan early. What sort of flowers?”

“I would prefer not to have flowers,” Loki said wearily. He sounded like he was reminding her. "They produce a most unpleasant effect upon me."

“Ah yes,” Frigga said absently. “What sort the least?”

“I like daisies,” Tony offered, earning himself a delighted smile from Frigga and a withering look from Loki. “What?” he folded his arms at the trickster. “I can be quaint.”

“The linens,” she pointed to a stack of napkins and tablecloths. “Blue or green? If you are to marry your brother, he would prefer the blue.”

“Green, then,” Loki scowled. Frigga didn’t bat an eyelid.

Tony later made the mistake of showing her the digital camera.

She was planning to commission oil-portraits of each of her sons in honour of the big day. She asked Tony if he would like one of himself in the event that he won, though she feared he would have difficulty finding the time to pose.

“I can give you a picture for the artist to work from,” he offered.

Frigga didn’t have a clue what he meant by that.

Tony had brought his camera with him, because, you know, Asgard, obviously. And he was more than thrilled to show off something so admittedly dated but functionally downright interesting to someone like the goddess queen of another realm, who might also be his future mother-in-law. Being the ever-prepared technological genius that he was, Tony had also brought along all the relevant equipment he’d need to print photos in the middle of Asgard, in a carrier case the size of a book.

Frigga was so in awe of the amazing device that she spent the next hour following Thor and Loki from room to room, cataloguing their every movement.

“If only I had had such a thing when they were children,” she sighed pleasurably, snapping Thor in the middle of a yawn.

Tony showed her how to scroll back through the pictures she’d taken. Most of the captures of Loki were of him shooting disgruntled looks in the direction of Tony off-camera.

"Look at how handsome my sons are," she smiled. "I must go take a picture of their father!"

Frigga darted off excitedly toward the throne room, to undoubtedly startle the All-Father. Tony grinned to himself.

He decided to let her keep it.

*

Tony had determined right away that he liked the Lady Sif (what was not to like?) but didn’t think much of the Warriors Three.

Fandral he found annoying because of his preening ego (probably some form of critical self-reflection on Tony’s part, but oh well). Hogun was dull as a paste for company and also kind of scary. Volstagg, the fat one, came off pretty much as Loki had described him in a number of wickedly funny stories: a big, blundering idiot.

When he offhandedly mentioned his dislike of them to Loki, he was rewarded instantly with a blazing hot tongue-kiss against a wall near the King’s quarters. He was then dragged into the nearest pantry cupboard for an amazing blowjob.

From there he went on to make a habit of bitching about them whenever possible, yielding himself a number of sudden affections that went a long way toward making his undertakings as one of Loki’s suitors a bit less stressful.

The other Avengers were also finding ways to enjoy their time in Asgard.

Banner was engrossing himself in the culture, wearing the local dress and trying his hand at the indigenous speech and pass-times.

Clint had taken on the role of an unofficial Fourth to the Warriors Three and was hanging out in the taverns with them, knocking back mead. Sometimes after that, he could be found in the castle kitchens, bothering the scullery maids.

The Black Widow and the Lady Sif had hit it off right away and were teaching each other differing battle maneuvers, and discreetly watching the men spar on hot days.

Steve mostly spent his energies coming up with ways to help Tony and Thor. He was good old Steve, and it helped a hell of a lot. When he needed a break, Steve went to the training yards and sparred with whoever was available. This morning, it was with Tony.

“I’ve got some news. Namor’s out of the running,” Steve told him breathlessly, as their wooden swords smacked together. “He has officially withdrawn.”

Tony held up a hand, signaling a break.

“Whoah, back up. Any clue as to what might have happened?”

Steve smiled a little, trying not to look too proud of himself.

“I may have made a phone-call to the X-Men. Cyclops said he was going to have a word.”

Tony grinned. Good old Steve.

“I tip my hat to you, Sir,” he said with a dramatic little bow. “Common sense often prevails over genius.”

They sparred for an hour, and Tony let Steve win. Sort of.

The contest was now down to four. Between good guys and bad guys, it was now a point match.

*

Thor continued to get on Tony’s nerves.

The Thunder God had been bragging, telling his Asgardian friends and comrades how formidable his earthly teammates were in battle. It was a compliment, and in theory it wasn’t too bothersome.

However, it did tend to mean that Thor’s loyal contingent were constantly watching the Avengers’ every move, and frequently challenging them to friendly duels and spars. Tony kept getting laughed at and heckled for turning down the offers. He didn’t have time for it, so whatever, but it was still annoying. The imposition could be filed by Tony distinctly into a mental category entitled _‘Shit I don’t need right now’_.

The Iron Man Suit fascinated Thor’s friends, and they circled around him whenever he was wearing it, tapping and prodding it with their swords. When he flew, others thought he was an exotic bird and tried hunting him, shooting arrows at him from their positions on the ground. It was more irritating than threatening, and it left little dings in the red and gold paint.

Today was a big day for Tony and the locals. He spent his morning dressing himself in chainmail and medieval-looking armour, and did some last-minute training for the talked-about event.

An area reserved for tournaments had been arranged for Tony to complete tasks of merit in battle. All denizens of the kingdom were welcome to attend, and Loki would sit in the royal box-seats to watch him.

After a shitload of intense training from Clint and the Lady Sif, Tony had become passably skilled in archery, jousting and swordsmanship. An opponent had been assigned to him for today’s tests, and it would take a few hours to go through it all with a crowd and judges watching.

Arrows, swords, horses, jousting- none of these things could be referred to as his talents, but Tony had worked his tail off and was given points for his effort. As things went along, from the reactions of the crowd, he thought he was doing okay.

Rather frustratingly though, whenever Tony glanced over, Loki looked bored.

It was also becoming clear that a decent-sized portion of the crowd were there to watch Loki rather than Tony himself. Loki’s return to Asgard had been big news apparently, and people were craning their necks for a look at him. Even with a broad-sword coming at him, Tony was able to catch whispers of the trickster’s many nicknames from inside the crowd-noise. The judges themselves snuck glances at the second prince from their side of the stands.

Loki maintained his look of boredom. If he had noticed the attention (and he no doubt did), he acted as though he were perfectly oblivious.

After several hours of hard work in the hot sun, Tony finally finished all of his battle-merit tasks, with approval from the judges. He was given a respectful applause.

But before he’d even finished, he’d decided that he wasn’t done yet. Tony called out to the men there.

“Hey! As Midgard’s Mightiest Hero, I’d like to challenge one of your bravest warriors to some friendly little hand-to-hand fisticuffs. Just for fun,” he shouted, arms outspread. “Any takers?”

Offers were plentifully cried out, and Tony chose the biggest warrior he could find. The crowd encircled them to create a ring, and Tony took off his helmet. Loki was now staring at him attentively, as if Tony had lost his marbles.

Tony was pretty good at boxing and was surprisingly scrappy in a fist-fight. His opponent was big and lumbered too much, and Tony easily dodged most of his arm-swings. He got clocked once or twice, but landed many more blows than he took. The short fight ended in a very satisfying win for Iron Man, and the crowd took sides with the victor.

Tony bowed to his audience, and walked over to the platform to procure Loki.

“What do you think you are you doing?” the trickster hissed, as he let himself be dragged along.

Tony didn’t bother to explain. He looked around the crowd and pulled Loki into the middle of the ring with him, and single-mindedly kissed him in front of as many pairs of eyes as possible.

Loki kissed back awkwardly at first, then with great enthusiasm while their audience watched in silence. Neither of them gave a damn what anybody thought. 

*

That night there was an outdoor barbecue (at least that’s what Tony would have called it).

It was one of many pre-emptive feasts leading up to the Royal Wedding. Nobody seemed to mind that the celebrations were being held for Loki, who they didn’t particularly like, or that the other groom was still TBA. Any cause for festivity was always welcome, and they happily toasted and sang songs in the Trickster God’s honour and ate and drank and made merry.

The food, as Thor and Clint had attested, was superb. Tony tried boar for the first time, and immediately started hatching plans to start a small farm somewhere in upstate New York in order to keep an ongoing supply of it in store.

Loki sat to eat with Tony, but left without touching his food when Volstagg took the seat next to him. The good-natured fatso had been following Loki around all evening, trying unsuccessfully to let bygones be bygones and strike up a friendship with Thor’s possible future betrothed.

“He’s really very sweet when you get to know him,” Tony shrugged to the Warrior.

“Worry not, my friend. I do not take offense to Loki,” Volstagg shrugged back, eating Loki’s dinner. “He was not spanked often enough as a child.”

The Avengers mingled.

Steve was chatting to Odin a ways from the crowd by the royal table. Since they’d first arrived, the All-father had seemed impressed by Steve, with his commanding posture and airs of authority and good sense, and now they were conversing regularly like old friends. Natasha and the Lady Sif were warding off the advances of the men somewhat coyly, and Clint was boozing heavily and smashing cups into the fireplace with Thor. Banner was busy observing everything, quietly and happily.

Tony had found himself surrounded by a throng of several hot Valkyries, who wanted to hear all about his flying metal suit and his great power and his throne-side command of Midgard (it was widely believed that the only reason Thor and Loki continued to inhabit the earth-world was because they’d decided to rule it). Loki had managed to slip out of sight at his own party and had left Tony to his mead and subsequent flirty behaviour, possibly as an act of goodwill.

A group near the fire had started a drunken sing-a-long. Banner, who had been discreetly recording the indigenous songs on his phone (he was probably going to write a book about all this later), became annoyed near to the point of Hulking out when Clint took out his Ipod.

On top of having an enchanted cell-phone handy, Hawkeye had also taken with him some specially doctored portable speakers that Tony had tricked out to play in crystalline 5.1 surround sound anywhere they were brought, no matter how they were positioned. They were small enough to carry in a backpack but with enough volume to fill out a football stadium.

Clint drunkenly flipped through his playlists and hollered, “Hey! You guys like Lady Gaga?”, then hit ‘play’.

The Asgardians, already thoroughly sauced, went absolutely nuts.

Clint deejayed. He got requests for the same One Direction song about twenty five times (“Another!”). It appeared the Asgardians were especially fond of boy bands and female pop stars. When Tony tried to explain to a group of warriors that there were no small versatile creatures singing on command inside Clint’s tiny music device, they shrugged and were no longer interested. They just wanted to dance to Rihanna.

Thor was out busting a move with Natasha and Clint with Lady Sif, and Banner was soothing himself by observing the specifics of casual Asgardian dance in their local environment. Tony wanted to go find Loki and force him into at least one dance when Fandral came over and started questioning him about the looks of this mortal Lady Gaga and whether or not there was already a Lord Gaga in the mix.

There was an abrupt loud crack and a flash of bright light above them that caused everyone to stop in their tracks.

All of a sudden, brilliant multi-coloured fireworks began to burst in the sky overhead, and everyone stopped dancing just long enough to _‘ooh’_ and _‘ahh’_ over them. It was a pretty spectacular sight. Tony watched too, and it took him a good few minutes to realize that fireworks didn’t exist in Asgard, and as far as he knew none of them had brought any.

He turned around and looked up to find Loki sitting on a low tree-branch a short distance away from the party. He was lazily twirling his fingers, which gave off glowing trails of vaporous green light.

Tony leaned against a tree and watched him instead of the fireworks, and thought that maybe being stuck with him forever might not be so terrible after all.

*

“Is it just me, or have they stopped bringing up breakfast trays?” Tony asked rhetorically the next morning. It was more of a statement.

Loki waved a hand to the basket of golden apples on the low table by the bed. These had now been appearing every morning, in lieu of the tray.

“These should provide all the sustenance you would need to start your day.”

“I guess,” Tony shrugged, picking one up. “They are really good. It's just that I like to have something hot in the morning sometimes.”

“You are in another realm,” Loki reproached him. “You must learn to be flexible, and not act like an ungrateful tourist.”

 

The next morning, a tray arrived. On it was a hot apple pie.

“Here is your breakfast. I have seen to it that a hot meal be provided,” said Loki, gesturing to it invitingly.

“Oh,” Tony stared at the pie.

Loki gave him a sharp look and frowned. “Is there an issue?”

“Well, this is sweet of you, and I appreciate it, but I don’t usually eat pie for breakfast. Remember that first morning when we had bacon?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, we did.”

Loki pursed his lips in a scowl. “You are wasting a lot of time complaining here, Stark. You have many errands. Eat your pie and be gone.”

*

Time had been passing too quickly.

It was two weeks into the last month of the contest, and things between Tony and Thor had begun to strain beyond the point of speaking civilly to one another.

It hadn’t been any one thing in particular- it may have been building long before this.

When Loki had joined the team to begin with, Tony had been resistant and Thor had been Loki’s only connection to earth. The brothers had always been close, no matter how hard they fought each other. When Tony and Loki had started dating, a rift had formed between Tony and the Thunder God, and now it was finally coming to the surface.

Thor kept up his task-work with half of Asgard traipsing along after him, cheering. None of Thor’s fans seemed to mind that all of his brave feats were being done in the service of marriage to his wicked, disgraced younger brother. Thor’s God-strength and blind bravery were winning out slightly over Tony’s earthly sensibilities.

Thor fought, and Thor won. At the end of every finished deed, Thor lifted his hammer in the air, bellowed, was applauded, and then led his adoring followers back to the banquet hall for mead and a feast.

Tony was not having so fine a time as this. He’d had one suit nearly chomped in half by a shark-bite and was now on his second. He was much less familiar with the lay of the land, and his few cheerleaders included Steve, who was bossy, Loki, who was an unhelpful, unsympathetic pain in the ass, and the rest of the team, who were so busy having fun in Asgard that they kept forgetting to assist him at all.

“The Barren Lands?” Tony read off the list for his next task. “Boy does that sound like fun.”

The location of his next deed was so far away and tricky to get to that he had had to form a temporary truce with the Thunder God, who was coolly receptive to joining him. They journeyed together to the Barren Lands, which were remarkable for a healthy population of Griffins. Tony followed mostly behind Thor, who knew the way, but steamed ahead occasionally out of ego.

They came up to an immense crevice in the dusty, rust-coloured earth about an hour’s flight from the castle. Thor fluttered down to the edge of the ravine and landed on his feet. Tony hung in the air just above him and looked down.

Tony could see no bottom to the crack dividing the land and saw no conclusion to it on either side. All he could see inside was endless flat cliff-face and black shadow deep, deep down where the sun wouldn’t reach.

“The Griffins dwell here in the caves,” Thor pointed, and sure enough there were holes in the craggy rock-face.

“Okay,” said Tony. He’d been so busy being on-and-off irritated at being in Thor’s presence that he hadn’t thought past the point of their arrival. “So how do we kill them?”

Thor looked surprised by the question.

“Nay, Stark. We would not slay these noble beasts. It would be most dishonourable to do so,” Thor educated him. “The Griffin is a creature beloved by all Asgardians, to be respected and left to roam.”

Tony tried to fit in with the sentiment. He wasn’t really a fan of killing anything, but the beloved creatures in question were basically bird-beaked lions with wings.

Slowly, not looking forward to the answer, Tony asked,

“So how are we supposed get the feathers?”

Thor shrugged and handed him a cheesecloth sack.

“Be warned,” said Thor, as he headed toward a cave. “The noble Griffin is quick to anger.”

*

Ten minutes later, Tony and Thor exited the cave with sacks full of feathers, pursued first on foot and then aerially by half a dozen furious Griffins. They were chased all the way back to the castle, and the flying beasts only retreated when Banner bolted out and Hulked out at them.

Thor was bloodied and covered in feathers but grinned happily at his overall success. Tony had a cut on his forehead but the brunt of the damage done was to his suit, which was carved up and dented by claw- and bite-marks. He was pretty much down to one suit now, but least he had a sack of feathers.

The next morning, a single Griffin was still skulking around in the orchards. Tony felt sure it was waiting for him. Banner wanted to study it and Frigga took pictures. Clint threw fowl drumsticks at it and tried to pat it on the head.

Tony and Thor looked at one other over breakfast. When the food was done they put down their silverware and walked away separately in opposite directions.

*

Tony was busting his ass, and he was starting to resent his teammates.

He’d been to the forests, the seas and the cliffs. He’d gained skills in art and war, and had worked in small confines of science. His goal was clear, but the path to it was not. His friends (Steve withstanding) had not been of much help, truth be told. He’d been hoping for something more out of them.

Loki was always around and was good for moral support when he was in the right mood to be, but was not allowed to give him any hands-on assistance. As for the others, they were never available when he went to look for them, or else they were engaged in other very involved activities and promised apologetically to help later, sometime, eventually.

Apart from contact with Steve, Tony had been out of the loop with his fellow Avengers for days. By the time Tony managed to check in with them and enforced a group meeting, Clint had tamed the Griffin and named it Fred.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tony said in the doorway of the gathering hall, where they’d been meeting up whenever possible.

The Griffin sat near the stone hearth and stared at Tony, flicking its tail.

“Nope, not kidding. No sudden movements though, that could end badly. _No sudden movements, right good boy?_ We’re a good boy, aren’t we Fred?” Clint adopted a voice and scratched the Griffin vigorously behind both ears. “Who’s a good boy?”

“I could always Hulk out if it… you know,” Banner confided quietly.

“Tears Stark limb from limb and devours him?” Loki offered.

“I don’t think it would… _eat_ anyone. They’re not supposed to be openly aggressive. Clint says it’s happy with leftovers. He seems to have it under control. I guess,” Steve said with some reluctance. “I watched them play fetch in the courtyard.”

“That _thing_ is not coming home with us,” Tony said sullenly. “It keeps _looking_ at me.”

Tony looked over at the Griffin. It stared back.

“Nice boy, Fred!”

Clint rolled a ball to the creature, which it shredded it apart with its beak.

*

After some heckling and peer pressure from the hard-to-say-no-to Steve Rogers, the Avengers assembled to slay a dragon.

“His was bigger than ours,” Hawkeye complained, wiping soot from his eyes. Of all of them, Clint was the most blackened. “Stupid Thor.”

“I'm beginning to see Tony’s point about this,” the Black Widow said as she wiped viscous goo off the blade of her broad-sword. “He’s making things harder for the rest of us.”

Captain America was trying with effort to remove his shield from the jaws of the now-deceased dragon they had just spent that last hour taking down. He pulled and grunted.

“You know!- he only!- means well!”

“Right, that’s great and all, but he’s getting in our way. We could have used his help, rather than have him as another opponent,” Hawkeye griped, mourning the charred remains of his bow.

The Hulk was still on the loose somewhere in the forest and trees could be heard falling over in the distance, shaking the earth beneath them.

“How the hell are we supposed to bring this thing back to the castle without Banner?” Tony asked, feeling monumentally stressed. "We need to provide proof."

They considered this unhappily.

“I guess we have to take the head off,” Steve said bleakly, paling a shade or two.

All of them stood in regard of this enterprise. It made for a very long pause.

“Oh, fine,” snapped Natasha and, with utmost annoyance, began hacking the neck with her sword.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony had to go to Hel.

There was a particular skeleton in the land of damned sinners that had once belonged to a fallen King, and he would need at least a bit of bone to complete his next mission.

“Mephisto’s probably wearing the whole pile of them as a necklace,” he griped to Loki, while changing into his armour.

“I doubt it,” Loki said flatly. “He doesn’t have the foresight for anything as simple as that. He is far too busy thinking of adding to his collection of souls.”

“I’ll have to keep an eye on mine, then,” Tony said, standing. “If I haven’t sold it to you already.”

Loki didn’t respond to the quip and stared off at the wall distractedly.

“Well, I’m off to the fiery pit,” Tony announced, leaning down toward Loki. “Gimme a kiss.”

But Loki was too busy fingering his lip. A slow smile was spreading itself over his face.

“Wait, Stark,” he said, looking whimsical. “You know that I am not allowed to help you in this, but perhaps you should think about what has been said here for a few more moments.”

*

Tony had an excellent stroke of luck in Hel. He went there dressed in his street-clothes, and knocked on Mephisto’s front door.

Mephisto was hot for souls. While he was down there, Tony found out that he kept them in a showroom in shiny glass jars that he polished at least once a week. Tony was invited inside his Kingdom, which was of modern design and looked like a really Goth version of the Avengers Mansion.

Under Loki’s sideways tutelage, Tony approached the Lord of Hel and made him an offer.

He would give Mephisto his soul as long as the Hel Lord agreed to give up in his pursuit of the trickster. They would both need to sign a written contract to that effect. Tony’s signature was already there.

Mephisto looked at him hungrily and agreed to the exchange.

“Obviously I need your signature as proof,” Tony said, producing a piece of paper. “I just thought of this deal on my way here so I haven’t typed out a contract as such, but I’ve written one out on a piece of paper, as long as that’s acceptable to you. Have a read through. Got a pen?”

Mephisto read over it quickly and grabbed a pen made of carved index-finger bone, sharpened to a point at the end. He dipped it in a handy blood-filled ink-pot, and jotted his name on the dotted line.

“You have been a very bothersome opponent,” Mephisto said in his surprisingly baritone voice. “I am debating whether or not I can wait for you to die naturally.”

“Well, good things do come to those who wait,” Tony reminded him benevolently. With a sudden frown, he started waving his hand in front of his face. “Man oh man. Boy is it hot down here! I’m parched. You got any water?”

Mephisto looked somewhat affronted and suspicious.

“Oh come on,” Tony reprimanded, fanning his shirt. “I’m giving you my soul here. I don’t think a glass of water is too much to ask for.”

Mephisto considered for a moment and then grudgingly left, returning with a chalice of water. Tony kept fanning his face.

“Whew! How about a fan? You got a little hand-held fan? No wait, never mind, I’ve got a travel-size one in my pocket. Let me just get that.”

Under Mephisto’s dubious staring, Tony took out a travel-size cooling fan. He switched it on and let it blow air at his face.

“That is sooo much better,” he sighed in relief. “This is worse than my holiday house in Tahiti. Man, if I were you, I’d vacation in Alaska.”

“Hmm. Yes, I am killing you now,” Mephisto decided out loud.

“Wait up, Mister Coop Logo,” Tony stopped him with a hand held up. “I have something to show you first.”

Tony held up the contract in front of the Hel Lord, and raised the fan just ahead of it. In front of Mephisto’s eyes, the words written on it began to disappear, leaving just the Hel Lord’s signature.

“Have you ever heard of disappearing ink?” Tony asked him. “See, my boyfriend really likes playing tricks on people.”

Mephisto’s face fell. He looked at Tony, stupefied. But Tony wasn’t done yet.

Tony funneled up the contract, dipping the top half into the chalice of water.

He then unfolded it and laid it on the table. A different set of words began to bleed through the damp paper.

“How about invisible ink?” He smiled. “Oh yeah, I just remembered. I brought my own set of pens.”

*

With Mephisto now out of the picture, the contest was down to three.

The only real obstacle was Doom, and if the Avengers could take him out of the running, they could end the whole insane thing without consequence.

“I will have words with Doom,” Loki decided. “We used to be allies. I will make him see sense, or else we will beat him to death.”

Loki turned on his heel and walked with great purpose toward the front door, green cape flowing. He expected the Avengers to stare after him.

“He’s still adjusting to our earthly ways,” Tony apologized to Steve on their way toward the Bifrost. "He's just kidding. I think.”

Strapping on their costumes, the Avengers travelled to Latveria by way of the rainbow bridge.

They fell onto jagged rock and breathed in smoke. The air in Latveria was hot and thick with the smell of brimstone.

Doom’s castle, not far from their landing point, was like something out of a bad horror/fantasy film, all billows of smoke and dungeons and drawbridges. They travelled over treacherous rock, sometimes along narrow ledges they had to put their backs to, and finally made it to the edge of the Castle von Doom.

Loki had already teleported there and was waiting impatiently. The team caught up with him and had to stop at the edge of a moat of lava to wait for the drawbridge to lower. Doom’s hunchbacked minions eyed them curiously, but made no move to stop them.

Loki walked right up to the very edge of the steep pit, looking hot-tempered.

“DOOM!” he shouted, his voice echoing across the cavernous rocks. “Do hurry up and provide passage! I do not have all day!”

Loki’s voice stopped echoing. Seconds later there was a groaning sound, and the drawbridge came down fast with a crack. The team crossed the fiery moat and entered the formidable castle.

Loki knew his way around and they followed. When they reached the doors to Doom’s chambers Loki held up a hand, halting them.

“I will speak to Doom alone,” he said, strolling ahead of them. “Stay here. Watch if you like.”

The Lord of Latveria was seated upon a spindly wrought-iron high-backed chair that was somewhat throne-like. The room was very dark and moving with shadows that flickered from a few flaming torches burning here and there along the stone walls. A cauldron bubbled away on the hearth.

At Loki’s entrance, Doom rose to greet him. He completely blanked the rest of them.

“Trickster,” Doom said in his rumbling voice. “We meet again. Doom can see that your wounds have healed nicely.”

“Of course they have,” Loki said sharply, arms folded behind his back, circling the throne and Doom in slow steps. “That does not mean that I wish to have any more inflicted on me while I am here. We agree this is to be a civil visit, yes?”

Doom nodded.

“You are safe for now, Trickster. Say your peace.”

“I want you to desist,” Loki explained breezily. “You have nothing to gain by ensnaring me in a marriage, I can assure you. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

But Doom just shook his head.

“Desist? Bah. Never.”

One of Loki’s pale hands rose to tap a finger against his bottom lip thoughtfully. It was pretty distracting, if your mind worked like Tony’s.

“You think that binding me in such a pact will help you to rule the Nine? It will never work,” Loki confided to Doom. “Surely you must know I would make it impossible for you, especially in such close quarters.”

“The Realms? Bah. Doom does not care about that.”

The Latverian sounded so disinterested that Loki faltered for a fraction of a second.

“You mean to tell me you no longer have designs on them?” the trickster asked carefully, lifting an eyebrow. “That I find hard to believe. When you and I were allies, we discussed almost nothing else.”

“All matters were different during our time together, Trickster,” Doom said simply. “Taking the Realms is no longer of import. Doom has other interests at stake.”

Loki’s eyebrow twitched to betray his confusion. “Then what exactly is it that you want from me?”

Doom’s response was surprising, to say the least.

“Doom has very strong feelings,” the Latverian said openly. “Doom believes it is love.”

The trickster was at an uncommon loss for words.

“Doom…?” Loki uttered, trailing off.

“Doom thinks of you often, with highest regard. Doom has written poetry. Doom will read it aloud if you wish.”

“Oh…” Loki sat down on the throne and clutched at his forehead. “Please, no.”

“Do you not remember the night we met, Trickster?” the Lord demanded to know, shaking his fist. “The moon was full, and there were many stars in the sky above Latveria. Doom recalls it as magical!”

Doom, Tony realized, was dressed in what might be considered his date-clothes. He wore a fancier-than-usual tunic and what looked like a brand-new hooded cape. His mask was looking especially shiny.

Loki seemed to be snapping out of it. He collected himself, regaining his posture, and sat up straight.

“I am spoken for, Doom! You know of this,” the trickster shot back. “Rescind now, and we will never speak of this again!”

Doom continued fist-shaking. “Doom will never rescind! Doom does not yield, especially in matters of the heart!”

Loki was becoming angry, and with Loki’s anger came bluntness.

“I do not want you, Doom!” Loki shouted. “I never have and never will! You must relent now, this instant!”

There answered a trembling sound. To Tony’s great amazement, Doctor Doom seemed to be crying behind his mask.

“Doom only wishes for your affection,” he wept, weakly fist-shaking. “Doom has feelings, too, you know. Doom will never let go!”

“Oh God, he’s seen ' _Titanic_ ,’” Clint muttered in Tony’s ear.

They all stood in awkward silence while the sorcerer wedged a hanky into his mask's eye-holes. He then whipped his cape back alarmingly.

“You will pay for this insult, Trickster! You have not heard the last from Doom!” he shouted ominously, and disappeared in a fist-waving poof of smoke from his own quarters.

They stood silently in his wake.

“Okay. Somebody’s running a little hot and cold with the feelings,” Clint threw out an icebreaker. “Now I’m gonna have to picture him spreading his arms out over his moat, listening to that Celine Dion song.”

Loki grimaced and rubbed his tightly closed eyes with his fists. “Please can we stop talking of this?”

“Fat chance, Loki. You are such a tease.”

“ _Clint_ ,” Tony sighed, barely able to summon the effort.

The archer shrugged. “Come on, Tony. I bet he showed Doom a little leg at some point. Maybe as a chick. Have you _seen_ him as a chick?”

“In more ways than you ever will, yes.”

“Truly I am flattered, but the merits of my female form are well beside the point here,” Loki snapped. “Doom does not take well to injury. He will want vengeance for the slight, and will continue to seek ownership of me. Captain, what is to be our next move?”

“Hmm,” Steve frowned deeply.

Clint was looking the trickster up and down, appearing distracted.

“Hey. Next time you shapeshift into a chick, would you let me touch your boobs?”

"Touch me, Barton, and I will rip off your arm."

"Come on. How about just one nipple?"

It was the first time in a while that Tony had to stop Loki from murdering one of his teammates.

*

Since the Doom revelation, more days had gone by. Time was running lower and lower, slipping through the hourglass, and Tony had had to be more dedicated than ever before.

So, it was with great relief and satisfaction that, for the first time in days, he was given the chance for a short, sweet break.

“This is actually… nice,” said Steve, as he looked out over the horizon.

“Yeah,” agreed Tony. It was a beautiful sunset.

The two of them were sitting at the edge of a cliff, legs slung over the sides. The verdant green valley below rolled and stretched to a faraway line of trees in the distance. They sat high above it and held their swords loosely, where not long ago they had been gripping them tight.

Steve was a good person to sit in comfortable silence with. After a hard fight, he was always calm and reflective. The feeling spread between them.

They had just checked off a very involved task from the list which had required Tony to climb to the very highest peak in all Asgard (no flying allowed), hiking a day and night on foot. At the acme point they had waited until one of Odin’s strange talking ravens had flown down to meet them and whispered a riddle in their ears.

Solving the riddle and following clues, their quest had brought them to a cave in the side of the mountaintop. Here they would visit a crone and tell her a tale. If she enjoyed it, and could not predict the ending, she would offer them food and respite for a night, and lead them to the next part of their task in the morning.

Despite Steve’s disapproval, Tony told her a story called ‘The Sixth Sense’ and was given enthusiastic room and board for his trouble. Tony especially enjoyed the hot food (he had packed several sensible lunches, but, at some point when he’d turned his back, Loki had taken them out and replaced them with apples). He felt very contented and he slept like a stone.

The crone had been good on her word; when morning came, she had given them the desired location of their goal. From there, they’d only needed to fight off a three-breasted harpy to get to the treasure chest at the bottom of a lake and obtain the single fist-sized ruby they’d come for.

It had been a three-day trek altogether and now with it finished, it was nice to rest a while. Steve had been good to come with him, and it had been nice to spend time together. With Steve, he didn’t have to apologize for anything or thank him except when he meant it, and he didn’t feel pressured to speak right after the work was done. So for a while, neither of them did.

When someone did break the silence, it was Steve.

“So I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Steve said, looking down at his boots. “How are you feeling about marriage?”

The question, perfectly reasonable, took Tony by surprise.

He’d been so caught up in the whirlwind of getting there that he hadn’t thought beyond it much, at least not with any deep consideration.

Thinking about it now required more silence.

“Weird,” he admitted after a minute, rolling it over in his mind. “But not freaked out, actually. Which is something.”

It was indeed. Getting married and being married were two very different propositions, as Tony was coming to realize.

 _Getting_ married he had thought about vaguely before drifting off to bed a few times recently.

A Tony Stark wedding would be (if he had his way) a production of epic proportion. Maybe on a Vegas-themed cruise ship with the media invited and Groom-and-Groom ice sculptures and a choir of two-hundred Fat Elvises singing ‘Devil In Disguise’ and ‘Hound-Dog’ respectively over Loki and Tony’s separate walks down the aisle.

(This would be followed up later by a small private ceremony with just the two of them and their closest friends, maybe in the park where Tony had proposed).

As for _being_ married, Tony had never thought of himself as marriage material, which mostly boiled down to the fact that he was selfish, ego-centric, smarter than everyone else, rude, blunt, bored in most company and obsessed with his work. Considering the way he lived his life (dressed in a flying metal suit, chasing peril), no sane person would be able to handle him.

But Loki (not particularly sane to begin with) had somehow snuck in under the wire and fit in with him. Being married to Loki wouldn’t be much different to what they had now, except they’d have rings on their fingers and Tony would have to start remembering to say ‘my husband’ instead of ‘Loki’ when introducing him to people. And the notion of being Loki’s husband was such an implausible, lunatic idea that Tony was starting to like the sound of it.

“What would you think,” Tony asked slowly, “of being my best man?”

Steve blinked a little.

“If I win, obviously,” Tony continued. “You can say no, by the way.”

“I…yes,” Steve began nodding, quickly and repeatedly, “Yes, absolutely. I would be honoured.”

It had been a gamble, and Tony was glad it had paid off.

There had been a point when, unbelievably, Steve and Tony had both had an interest in winning the trickster’s cold little heart. Steve had bowed out gracefully when things had taken the turn that they had and was sort-of dating someone these days, and the three of them had never mentioned it again. It all seemed like a long time ago.

“That’s excellent,” said Tony, rather than ‘it means a lot to me’, which was what he meant. “Because otherwise I would have had to ask JARVIS, and he probably would have said no.”

Steve chuckled. “I’ll look forward to giving you away. Don’t expect any dancing ladies at your bachelor party, though.”

Tony snorted. “Pssht! As if I’d get away with that and get to keep my testicles. Big ixnay on the strippers, he and I talked about it. I’ll be behaving myself like a gentleman.”

Steve looked surprised and impressed. “Wow. I think you’re really becoming an adult, Tony. Go, Loki.”

Tony smiled. He didn’t bother mentioning that the arrangement he had made for his (private) bachelor party involved twenty or so scandalously clad Loki clones, both male and female, performing all sorts of debaucheries from pole- and lap-dancing to things that were downright illegal. It would probably spoil the moment.

“I think it’s great that you’re settling down,” Steve went on, “If you win, of course. You two have a really calming effect on each other, believe it or not.”

Tony felt like he’d been poked suddenly. “Settling down? Good God. It won’t be like marriage for old people! I’m not _settling down_.”

“Well, you’re not exactly a kid anymore.”

“Like you should talk. Grandpa.”

Steve smiled off at the skyline. The sun had gone down, making way for a deep blue evening sky.

They would need to head back to the castle soon, but Tony thought he’d stretch things out for at least a few more minutes. He reached into his rucksack.

“Apple?” he said.

He took one out for himself and offered one to Steve. Steve thanked him and took a large bite and chewed slowly.

“Mmm,” Steve said after a minute. “These are really good.”

*

There was only days left to the contest now, and Tony needed to blow off some steam.

He had been out all day, doing ridiculous things in the name of love. He could think of a few ways for Loki to show him some gratitude.

He found the trickster sprawled out in bed, eyes glued to a book. Without preamble, Tony crawled over him and removed the book from his hands. Loki caught the look on his face and allowed himself to be roughly pushed back against the pillows. They started kissing, and Tony made it deep and heavy right away to get things going. 

Loki was dressed in his earth-clothes, which he never wore in Asgard outside of their bedroom. Tony stroked his hands under the green wool sweater, peeling it over Loki’s head.

“You are so fucking hot,” Tony grabbed Loki’s belt buckle, unzipping the front of his fitted black denims. They yanked and kicked their clothing off. Tony’s T-shirt came off last, and Loki threw it over his shoulder.

Tony draped himself over Loki so that their bodies fitted together. Loki made a needy little sound and pressed a hand to Tony’s chest, moving him back so that their eyes could meet. 

Loki licked his lips and whispered, “Stark. I want your mouth.”

Happy to oblige, Tony placed deliberate kisses along Loki’s stomach, hips and chest. He ran a tongue-trail downward before taking him in. Bobbing his head, he made lurid wet sounds that he knew drove Loki crazy. Loki raked his fingers through Tony’s hair. 

Not long in, Loki gave his hair a tug and pushed him off before he could finish. Tony opened his eyes to see Loki's burning into his. Without another word, Loki flipped over onto his stomach.

Given the invitation, Tony climbed over him. He scrambled for the bottle of lubricant hidden beneath the pillows and uncapped it, squirting some into his hand. 

Tony had once endeavoured to try every sexual experience known to man, and (apart from an unseemly few) came to believe that he may have accomplished it. He gave his ego a little pat on the back at what felt like a job well done. That was before he began sharing his bed with a shapeshifter.

No matter how many times they did this, Loki kept finding new ways to surprise him. He would swap gender, or even just selective body parts, sometimes in the middle of sex if he really wanted to give Tony a mindfuck.

This time was a bit subtler. As part of his show of submission, Loki gasped and took sharp little breaths, eyes squeezed shut in either pain or concentration. It looked vulnerable and sweet on the surface, but at the same time served as a reminder of how not-even-slightly innocent Loki actually was. Tony had to inch in very carefully, and even stop briefly so he didn't finish before he'd even gotten started.

When Tony started moving, Loki hissed a little; Tony liked the sound so much he wanted to hear it again. Each thrust of his hips elicited a little cry that sounded somewhere between pleasure and pain. Right when Tony thought he couldn't hold off any longer, Loki signalled him by moaning and clawing at Tony’s hand where it was gripping the mattress.

With Loki shuddering beneath him Tony gratefully let himself go, muttering ecstatic nonsense.

In the afterglow, he was told without words how much he was appreciated.

*

“When we get home, I’m taking you to Venice,” Tony said thoughtfully a short while later, carding his fingers through Loki’s damp, mussed-up hair. “I miss coffee. I want a perfectly foamed cappuccino at Caffé Quadri in St. Mark’s Square. In the evening, with lights on the water and the orchestra playing.”

“Mmm, I would like that,” Loki murmured contentedly, touching the metal rim of the arc-reactor. His head rested on Tony’s chest just beside it, and his face was illuminated by a faint blue glow.

“And Paris, for café au lait by the Seine,” Tony said dreamily. “Have you ever been to Paris?”

Loki shook his head no.

“We’ll definitely go there after Venice. We’ll get croissants and sit on the steps of the basilica near Montmartre at breakfast-time. From there you can see the whole city.”

Loki grinned at him teasingly. "Oh, Stark. Such a romantic."

“Shut up, you'll love it."

Loki nodded against his chest. “It does sound nice. We must go there, soon.”

Tony pulled carefully at a tangle in the coarse black hair, unravelling it. “Have you been to Europe at all?”

“I have been to Germany,” Loki bristled somewhat. “That is where you and I first met. Do you not remember?”

From Loki’s pissed-off expression, it was as if Tony had forgotten their anniversary, rather than the first time they’d beaten the hell out of each other.

“Of course I do,” Tony said defensively. “I called you Reindeer Games, and blasted you across the square where you were beating up Steve."

Loki’s frown relaxed a little, but didn't smooth out entirely. Tony kissed it.

"I thought you were an absolute douche, but also a stone cold fox," Tony reminisced. "Even after you threw me out of a window, I was tempted to give you my number." 

"You were not!" Loki snorted, lightly smacking his arm.

Tony smiled. "Was too. I may have even mentioned it to Thor."

That put Loki's eyebrows up. "I doubt if he liked that very much."

"Oh, he did not."

"You must have been very drunk at the time to risk the wrath of my brother," Loki scolded. "Or else very reckless and stupid."

Tony gave him a roguish look. "How about very brave?"

"Hmm," Loki considered. Then he rolled sideways and propped himself up over Tony, hands on either side. He dipped down to kiss Tony's neck. "Well. I suppose you certainly are that."

*

Tony shouted from across the room. “Oh my God! Actual breakfast!”

Tony brought over a tray-full of sizzling bacon, bread, eggs and fruit.

Loki looked at the tray in surprise, then snatched it.

“That is mine,” he said, shielding it protectively. “I requested it specifically.”

“Oh. Can’t I have some?”

“No.”

“Well what am I gonna have?”

Loki pointed to a silver dish with a lid on it. “Apple Crumble. I recall you ordering it once at a restaurant.”

Tony considered telling Loki that that had been for dessert. But despite being tired of apple-based dishes, he was more distracted by the sight of Loki’s slightly too-prominent hipbones. He prodded one with his thumb.

“You know what? If you’ll actually eat it, then fine,” Tony said as he crawled back into bed. “You’ve lost some weight, I think. You're looking kind of skinny.”

Loki didn’t look like he cared much. “I know. It is stress.”

"Better start eating this then, or I will," Tony picked up a piece of bread, only to have it snatched out of the air in front of his mouth.

“I am surprised that it bothers you if I am looking rather svelte,” Loki said sceptically, tossing aside the bread. “You always seemed rather fond of being pictured with those starved-looking model creatures. Barton has shown me troves of such evidence on the internet.”

 _Well, screw you Clint_. Tony would have to borrow Loki’s itching powder and figure out where Barton kept his Hawkeye pants.

Tony smiled. “That was just for show. I prefer my lovers to be able to hold me down on occasion.”

Loki was bemused by this. “Really, Stark. That is no issue. I could pin you down with a look if it pleased me.”

“Eat something.”

Loki rolled his eyes, but picked up a grape and pointedly inserted it in his mouth. Tony nodded his approval.

He hopped out of bed and pulled his jeans on and looked around for his T-shirt.

“I gotta go,” he reached over and kissed the side of Loki’s head. “Duties to perform and all. Gotta fight a bunch of Trolls. Finish your breakfast. I would really like it if you start to develop an ass.”

Loki ate another grape and made a face at him. “I have one already, and he is very trying to my patience.”

Tony laughed on his way out the door. “I love it when you joke!”

Feeling content and like a dutiful boyfriend, Tony headed off to get his ass kicked by Trolls.

*

The Land of the Trolls was a good long flight away from the kingdom, close to a faraway castle that Loki had once been banished to for his bad behaviour. Loki’s naughty-corner was so close by that, after the Trolls, Tony thought he’d have a peek inside.

One look was all it took.

Loki was definitely evil.

 _Was_ , Tony told himself. Used to be. Past-tense. Not anymore. But it was still all kinds of unsettling.

At first, the castle had seemed bare. Tony could find nothing but long dark halls and rotting furniture being chewed apart by vermin. Five minutes in, he nearly left out of boredom. That was before he got to the room at the end of the hall.

There were a large set of doors at the end of the main corridor. Tony sensed something about them and paused. Then he opened them, and all of the warmth left his body.

Humanoid skulls, and a variety of other-shaped ones, were chucked in a towering heap in a corner of what might have been called the throne-room. Some of them had been whimsically placed on pikes and had crowns or hats on, or crow-quill pens shoved in their eye-sockets, seemingly used as pencil-holders. There was a throne, but Tony couldn’t imagine that Loki had subjects. This must have been why it was such a mess, and why all of his toys seemed to be here.

Most of all there were games, ones that ended in death. Around the room were playful torture devices, most of which had skeletons falling apart in them. Some looked carefully constructed, others like they’d been thought up in the spur of the moment. There was a sense of amusement to all of it. Ancient dried blood flaked in cracks on the stone floor.

There was a large area devoted to spell-work, much of which had been smashed, abandoned or taken. There was a thick coating of dust, with cobwebs spun in between. Picking up a filthy glass jar and wiping a hand over it, Tony saw that what floated inside it was a heart. He flinched, and it nearly slipped out of his palm.

Tony had seen enough. More than, in fact. He left quickly, deeply wishing that he hadn’t come. Everything in his head felt fucked up.

He heard the Lady Sif’s voice there, echoing. 

_You should be most watchful out of all._

Feeling a little sick, Tony flew back toward the castle, not sure how to feel about anything.

*

Tony was glad that the flight back to the castle was a long one. It gave him time to think, and to put things into perspective.

Loki had been a super-villain. Super-villains were not cuddly creatures, generally. They killed people. They collected skulls. They sent alien armies to destroy Manhattan. Tony knew all this; he’d known it the whole time that he and Loki had been together. He’d just sort of wanted to pretend not to.

He also knew it was far more complicated than bad-guys-kill-people, good-guys-don’t. Loki had famously gone completely batshit crazy once or twice over the past several hundred years. There were some pretty messy surrounding circumstances. Tony decided to think about it later.

Tony had nearly made it back to the royal castle when he spotted a distant figure on the horizon, moving toward him. He was still far enough away from the castle that it seemed strange to see a lone man on horseback riding out at such a speed. He dipped down to about twenty feet above ground-level to get a better look.

Over the hilltops, the rider was approaching. Coming closer, Tony recognized Volstagg the Voluminous galloping toward him. Volstagg bounced on the back of his horse, which looked about ready to drop dead.

“Tony Stark!” Volstagg bellowed up at him, rearing to a halt nearby. Tony flew to meet him.

“Hey there. Volstagg. Buddy. Pal,” Tony kept leaving pauses between each greeting, but the big guy was still too busy panting. “What’s happening?”

Tony set himself down on land so as not to spook the horse. Volstagg was bright red, short of breath and sweating like a pig, but the look on his face was serious. Tony waited until the Warrior finally caught his breath.

“I am sorry to bear bad tidings, but it is most urgent. I bring an unhappy message,” Volstagg spoke at last, wheezing, “It is Loki. He is very ill.”

 *

Tony didn’t have to wait for any more information than that. He just about managed to thank the man before rocketing off into the sky.

He made his way across the fields and straight up to Loki’s bedroom window. He found it open, with a breeze drifting in through the curtains. Tony hovered in the air outside, then removed his helmet and gloves and climbed in.

Frigga was seated at the edge of the bed. Several stray curls had escaped their fastenings atop her lovely head. At the sight of Tony, she conjured a flimsy smile, then looked back down at her son.

Loki was curled in a ball, with an expression of pain on his face. His hair was sweat-plastered to his forehead and he was breathing unevenly. He looked absolutely terrible.

Frigga placed a hand on Loki’s shoulder. "Darling,” she said softly, “Look who is here.”

Tony cleared his throat to speak. “Loki? It's me."

Loki's eyes opened part-way at the sound of Tony's voice. There was a glimmer of relief, then a frown. “You should not be here. Go, and finish your tasks."

“You're sick," Tony uselessly stated the obvious.

Loki tried to sit up and failed. He winced and fell back against the pillows. "It is Doom. He does it to distract you. Pay it no heed, and continue. You must not let him win."

"I won't let that happen. But I'd rather not leave here until you're feeling a little better," Tony frowned when Loki twisted in pain.

"You have to," Loki pleaded, sounding a bit hysterical. "You must stop him. You have to, Tony, please."

The use of Tony's name was enough to set off the alarm bells. Loki called him 'Stark' even in the throes of passion. He put a hand to Loki's forehead, which felt hot enough to fry an egg on. He was probably half-delirious. 

"Okay," he agreed, "Whatever you need me to do."

Frigga interrupted any further conversation by making a shushing sound and stroking a hand down the length of Loki’s face several times. She waited for Loki’s eyes to slip shut and then walked Tony to the door.

"What happened?" he asked, completely bewildered. "He was fine when I left a few hours ago."

“The healers say it is poison,” she spoke in a whisper. “They know not what sort. None of the potions they have tried will halt its course.”

Tony remembered something that Thor had said once about Loki and poison. The details had been left out, and Thor had made it clear by his tone that Tony was never to ask for any.

“Hasn’t he been poisoned before?” Tony asked. Frigga’s body went convulsively stiff, like the mention of it scalded her. 

“Yes,” she answered tightly. “It was terrible. I will never speak of it again.”

Tony didn’t want to cause her pain, but he needed more facts. “This is different though? Or isn’t it?"

Frigga looked away and didn't answer.

"It won’t kill him,” Tony stated. But the more he spoke, the more Frigga’s expression turned to misery.

All she would say was, "It mustn’t be allowed to worsen.”

From where Tony stood now, Loki looked just as he did asleep in their bedroom at home.

“I’ll take care of it,” Tony said blankly. Frigga seemed to appreciate the sentiment. “I’ll figure it out.”

He left knowing that he would fix this. He just had no idea how.


	5. Chapter 5

A rumour had begun to circulate throughout the Kingdom of Asgard, starting in the halls of the royal castle. The handmaidens all gasped to each other over the secret, and told the other maids in the kitchens.

Soon the gossip was being passed along the yards and then in the public square, whispered into the ears of friends and hinted at by tradesmen over barters. Children shouted it out loud to one another during their lessons, and were boxed about the ears by their trainers for spreading such a vile and treasonous lie.

Word had it that the second prince was dying. He had long been the subject of terrible whispers, and the idea that he might soon pass on caused an undertone of dark sensation.

Many agreed, and most without saying so, that it would be for the best if he did.

Tony heard the rumour as he passed down one of the halls, in a snippet of conversation between two of the royal seamstresses.

He burst in on them and threatened to tell the royal family, who would probably cut out their tongues, or at the very least fire their asses. He left them staring after him, open-mouthed.

He stormed outside to kneel beside a tree. He watched the sun in the sky and the grassy landscape, trying to distract himself with things that were normal. 

Feeling unable to cope with the tasks that still lay ahead, he was sure as hell distracted.

*

“What do we know about poison?” Steve asked, as the Avengers sat around a table in the gathering hall. 

“Nothing,” Tony said honestly. He was wracking his brain, “Unless you count Palladium poisoning. Or alcohol poisoning.”

“Or food poisoning,” Clint added. “When I went to Mexico-”

“ _Clint_!” Steve looked to be in pain. “Please let’s stay on topic.”

“Would have been nice of Thor to turn up,” Tony said bitterly of their only missing teammate besides Banner, who was still being searched for. “He could tell us about the time that Loki was poisoned before.”

Steve shook his head. “The healers know all that. Whatever worked last time doesn't seem to be helping now.”

“And Thor’s at the bottom of the ocean, working on his worthiness tasks,” Natasha put forth, "He doesn't even know that Loki's sick."

Tony swallowed, starting to burn inside. He felt ready to lash out at the slightest provocation, not at any particular person. Just at everything in general.

“You know what? Fuck all this,” he rose from his chair abruptly. “I've had enough of this hocus-pocus, stick-waving magic medicine crap. I’m taking him home and bringing him to a goddamn hospital."

Steve stopped Tony by the arm, raising up his other hand in a peace-signalling gesture.

“Wait! Please, think about it. This is Doctor Doom we’re talking about. There’s every chance that this poison has some kind of mystical property. And Loki’s a God, Tony, he’s not-”

"Not what?" Tony snapped, yanking his arm away.

“He’s not human,” Steve said nonetheless evenly. “A hospital won’t be able to help him.”

Banner appeared then, being led by a guard who nodded to them and excused himself, shutting the doors behind him.

“Sorry I’m late,” Banner scraped a chair back and sat down. “Bring me up to speed.”

“What do you know about poison?” Steve asked him.

Banner looked surprised, then a little embarrassed. He blushed, and fiddled with his glasses.

“Quite a lot actually,” he said meekly. “That’s what gamma radiation is, essentially, in the way it affects a human body. Years of my life have been devoted to that area of research.”

 _Banner. Obviously._ Tony felt a little flare of anger with himself. He’d been so frazzled that the obvious stuff was escaping him.

“How about with nonhuman bodies? Frost Giants, to be specific. Do you think you could still make similar inferences?”

“Hard to say, but if I could look at his blood that would help me give you a response.”

“Done. Next?”

Banner stood up again, not one to waste time.

“Tony, I’ll do everything I possibly can, but I’m telling you now, I’ll need better equipment,” Banner said, stern and serious. “You guys do whatever you have to in order to make that happen. I’ll write up a list of what’s needed, and then I’ll go take a look at him.”

*

Banner’s list was texted by Clint’s phone to SHIELD headquarters within fifteen minutes.

Just over an hour later, a special package arrived on the Bifrost, courtesy of one Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD. The supplies and equipment that Banner had requested were neatly and precisely labeled inside, exact to the letter.

Banner created a makeshift lab in one of the healing rooms. He had taken samples of Loki’s blood and saliva, and was pouring over them, holding a pen in his mouth and scribbling notes with it occasionally. Tony followed him around, trying to help, feeling like an inept lab-assistant.

“I haven’t identified it yet, but it’s a slow-release toxin, so that should help to narrow it down,” Banner said, squinting into a microscope at a sample-plate. “Other poisons might have killed him flat-out, but this one is taking its time on purpose.”

“Can you see an arc in its progress?” Tony asked, trying to make out Bruce’s chicken-scratch handwriting in the notes.

“I haven’t been observing him for long enough yet, but I’d say we have at least another day or two. That may sound like a decent amount of time, but every minute does count. This is putting his body through a lot of stress.”

Tony tried to think positive. Loki could handle pain. Tony had seen him receive all sorts of insane injuries without ever complaining, even though he complained about everything else.

"Is the contest still on?” Bruce asked, shuffling over to flip through one of his books. “Doom must have thrown in the towel if he’s the one that did this.”

Suddenly,  a dark thought blossomed.

“The contest is on,” Tony realized, dismayed at how obvious it had been, and that it had taken him so long to figure it out. “Doom sent the poison for _both of us._ ”

Banner regarded Tony, then nodded in agreement.

“Best case scenario,” Tony continued, “I die, and Loki hangs in long enough for the contest to finish, because he’s a God and his system can take it. If Doom wins, he’ll give Loki an antidote. If he doesn’t, he’ll let him die so nobody else can have him. That’s probably been his game all along.”

“It’s a pretty strong theory,” Banner acknowledged. “So it must mean an antidote is possible. What do you think our chances are of finding Doom and forcing him to give it to us?”

“Not good. Loki said he showed Doom lots of hiding places and paths into Asgard back when they used to work together. He won’t let us find him, not when he’s got this as his trump card.”

“So that means you still need to win the contest. How many more days?”

“Two. A day and a half,” Tony counted.

“How many more things on your list need doing?”

“Not many. But what the hell is the point of me winning if this is what’s going on?"

Banner could sense Tony’s struggle. He took the pen out of his mouth and looked at Tony with kind brown eyes.

In an authorative voice he said, “Finish your tasks. I’ll take care of things on this end. If I need you, or if he does, I promise to let you know.”

*

After completing one more task in the pouring rain (Thor had returned from sea and been told), Tony begged Frigga to go get some much-needed rest. She hadn't left Loki's side for over a day now, and was starting to look dead on her feet.  Still very reluctant to let him out of her sight, it took a lot of persuasion before she finally agreed let Tony take over for several hours. 

Frigga warned him that things had gotten worse, and that being in the room could be dangerous. Loki’s magic had struck out at random in protection of its owner, mostly at the people tending him.

Frigga’s own hands were wrapped in bandages, and Banner had been flung across the room more than once. The curtains had been taken down after one of them went up in flames, and now the maids were too frightened to even set foot through the door.

As Frigga departed, she gave Tony a reassuring pat on the arm. "You need not be afraid. Just try to keep him calm."

Then she kissed Loki goodbye, and left the two of them alone.

Not expecting much in the way of conversation, Tony went in quite prepared to sit with him in silence. It turned out he didn't have to; now completely delirious, Loki talked and talked.

He spoke in incoherent fragments, muttering words that didn’t go together, sometimes in languages that Tony couldn’t identify. Portions of spells, jumbled memories, and half-divulged secrets all spilled from the trickster’s lips. 

He was so caught up in whatever wild hallucinations he was experiencing that he hadn't slept a wink. Banner couldn't sedate him in case it interfered with a possible antidote, so Frigga was becoming increasingly desperate to get him to sleep. 

Experienced in this department, Tony had his own methods to employ. First, he kicked off his shoes.

"Hey honey, it's time to go to sleep. You're driving your poor Mom crazy," he said, as he climbed into bed. At the bizarre sensation of magic swimming inquisitively around him, he added, "Please don't set me on fire."

He spooned himself around Loki's sweat-covered back and held him until he finally went still and stopped talking. His magic simmered down in response to the hug.

Tony filled the following silence with soft-spoken, completely inane conversation about how his company was doing at the stock-exchange. Then he listed the specs of the new Maserati Gran Turismo, and whatever else he could think of that normally bored Loki to tears.

Finally, Loki went slack in his arms and his breathing evened out. Tony felt a sense of relief and accomplishment.

Then a crack of thunder shook the room, and Loki flew awake in a panic. In his most cognisant moment all evening, he asked for his brother.

"He'll be here soon," Tony promised, knowing that he would forget within a minute or two.

He looked with contempt at the rain battering the window and thought, _Thor, you moron._

This became something of an ongoing routine. Thunder rumbled the earth, and Loki anxiously babbled until Tony calmed him into drifting off. Then after another short spell, it would happen all over again. Tony made a mental note to at some point find Loki's brother and punch him in his stupid, thunder-bringing face.

A few hours in, after having ignored it too long, Tony really needed to pee. During one of the lulls, he snuck out of bed. He only left the room for one minute.

When he got back, Loki wasn’t in his bed. Tony couldn’t see him anywhere.

The flash of dread had barely had time to hit when he heard a clattering noise on the floor on the opposite side of the bed. He bolted over to look.

Loki was sitting on the floor with blood dripping down his forearm. He was carving something into his skin with a knife.

Tony cursed and dropped down next to him, grabbing his wrists and prying the knife away. Loki looked at him with strangely calm eyes.

“Stark,” he said softly.

Tony saw a smashed vial and a potion spilled across the stone floor, soaking into the knees of his jeans. 

“Loki?" Tony reached out carefully to examine him. "What the hell are you doing?"

Loki had carved a symbol on his arm. In front of Tony’s eyes, the wound closed itself and vanished without a trace.

“A spell,” Loki said by way of explanation, with a rueful little smile. "I finally remembered how to do it. To bring me back to myself, if only for a moment. It will not last long, and will only work this once. I need you to do something for me. Please."

Emotion battering him from every direction, Tony only just managed to ask what.

“You must find Thor and bring him to me. I must speak with him before I am lost again.”

*

Tony found a maid to sit in for him and managed to get Thor there within moments. Loki asked to speak with his brother alone, so Tony waited in the hall for ten minutes.

Thor pushed past him on his way out the door without a word. Tony felt a twist of anger in his chest.

"Hey Thor!" he called out. "How about you lay off the thunderstorms? Your very sick brother is trying to sleep, and you keep waking him up!"

Thor didn't look back or respond as he disappeared down the hall, but five seconds later the rain stopped.

Inside the bedroom, Loki was fading fast, and was soon back to spouting delirious gibberish. Tony crawled back into bed with him.

Banner came to check Loki’s vitals and did a lot of frowning and mouth-pinching.

"How bad is it?" Tony asked quietly. 

“I need more blood,” Banner replied, and stuck a needle in.

Banner didn’t bother with comforting words or assurances, just took what he needed and left.

“We just have to keep him stable through the night,” he said on his way out the door.

*

Later that night, the effects of the poison ramped up, and Loki became even sicker. Like a switch had been flipped, his fever went from high to ferocious. 

Tony had been in his makeshift room at the end of the hall, and heard too many footsteps and hushed voices going past the door. He followed them and arrived to find Loki's bedroom in a state of chaos.

He was shouting frantic questions from the moment he walked in, and attempted to trip his way over the piles of books, strange instruments and jars of potion and salve that were everywhere on the floor of the usually neat room.

Banner was there, but when Tony called to him he didn't even turn to look over his shoulder. An elderly woman stepped in Tony's path to inform him that the prince was extremely ill, and told him bluntly to get out of the way.

Frigga was across the room, being comforted by one of her hand-maidens. She looked up and saw Tony and her face, which looked wild and frightened, crumpled into tears.

An ominous charge of static electricity hung in the air and made the hairs on Tony's arms stand up. He recognized it as Loki's magic, threatening to lash out at any moment and tear the whole place to shreds.

Some of the healers were chanting preventive wards in sync with each other, like the humming of bees. Behind them, Tony could just about make out Loki's shock of black hair against the sheets.

Tony had to get out of there. He'd lose it if he didn't. He walked fast down the corridor with ice in his veins, wanting to drink himself into oblivion and stay there.

Instead, he went to his room and put on his Iron Man suit, and stepped onto the balcony to look out.

Far in the distance a thunder-crack shivered across the earth. Black clouds materialised, swirling dangerously, underlined by spitting webs of blue electricity. The moon was swallowed up in the enveloping darkness, and a thin bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.

Somebody must have told Thor.

Feeling reckless and angry, Tony fired himself into the heavens, as far up as the suit would take him. He entered the storm, his vision blacking in and out as he passed through cotton-thick reams of dark cloud.

Rain began to fall, spattering hard against his lenses.

He finally stopped ascending and let the rain beat down. Gales of strong wind moved around him like a rocky sea. He felt completely alone in the universe.

Then a figure appeared in a breach in the clouds.

Thor floated upright at a distance of about fifty feet, his red cape billowing around him, in the centre of a swirl of dark cloud. A bolt of white lightning cut jaggedly across the blackness behind him, hitting the ground below with a deafening crack.

They stared at one another across the sky. Then, slowly, Thor lifted his hammer.

Tony saw bright red the second he was given the slightest chance, and every bad feeling inside him turned to burning, volcanic rage.

Without a single thought that wasn’t driven by anger, he switched on his repulsors and cranked the suit’s every setting to maximum power. Then he blasted himself at the Thunder God with the velocity of a missile.

Thor had similar ideas. He was coming toward Tony at full speed, a blur of red and gold and silver blazing like a comet-tail behind Mjolnir. As they approached each other, Thor pulled his arm back in a swing.

Tony felt a crashing blow to his chest and a loss of gravity; he found himself hurtling backwards for a long, spiralling ten seconds. As soon as he could he flipped himself upright, but Thor was already barrelling toward him again, with the force of a speeding truck.

Tony thrust a hand at Thor and fired his repulsors, hitting home. Thor recoiled, reeling backward. Tony slammed himself into the God's chest, plowing them upward into the eye of the storm.

Thor got his bearings back and swung, hitting Tony in the shoulder. It threw him off balance, and they spun away from each other by about ten feet.

For a moment, neither of them moved and just stared at each other.

“ _Screw you!_ ” Tony screamed impetuously.

The Thunder God didn’t say anything and continued to hover in place. The anger was beginning to drain from his face.

More furious than ever, Tony launched himself at Thor. Thor caught him in both arms, gripping him hard around the torso, and they began to descend at an unbelievable speed toward the ground.

Thor and Iron Man hit the dirt with the force of a bomb going off, creating a hole in the earth.

Tony may have lost consciousness. When he opened his eyes, he had no grasp of the time that might have passed. Thor was still face down on the ground, so it couldn’t have been very long. They both began to rouse together in the crater that had formed at their landing.

Tony crawled wordlessly out of the hole, sitting in pain at its edge. Thor picked himself up, only to saunter a few feet over to where Tony sat and settle down next to him. He looked at Tony with sad blue eyes. 

"I am sorry for allowing petty feelings to come between us, my friend. I know that you care for my brother, and that your intentions are true," Thor said quietly. He placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder. Though he couldn’t feel it physically through the armour, Tony still found solace in the touch.

Tony suddenly felt a whole lot of bad feelings wash out of him. It felt like a great relief.

"I'm sorry, too. About the petty feelings. This whole situation has got me acting crazy. I think I may have gotten a tiny bit jealous because of how close you two are."

Thor looked surprised. "Loki cares for you deeply. I have never seen him so content."

"I know. But you're his big brother. He loves you."

Thor nodded in understanding. "We have both been headstrong and foolish, to think that we need compete for Loki's attention. He is yours as well as mine. Now we must fight together to save him.”

*

“What did he say to you, earlier?” Tony asked, as they limped back toward the castle.

Thor looked ahead, wearing a grim expression.

“Loki has asked me to bring together an army to stop Doom. At first light, I shall gather the men.”

*

At dawn, the warriors of Asgard grouped beneath the balcony of the royal castle, dressed in their battle-armour. The morning light was cold and thin, and puffs of breath were visible in the frigid air. Rain fell overhead. Thor stood above and addressed them.

“Warriors of Asgard! My friends and comrades! A vile treachery has taken place, under all our watch. Our walls were breached by the villain Doom, who has launched an attack on our King and his family!”

Thor's words rang out across the courtyard. There was a sense of unease in the crowd. There could be heard dark mutterings, a shuffling sound, the clash and clink of metal.

“Would we allow a son of Odin to be slain under our very noses?" Thor looked around gravely. "That is what Doom thinks of us. That we cannot protect ourselves! That he may grow bolder, and try for the All-Father next!”

Below, the warriors made sounds of anger.

“Tell me,” Thor demanded, “Do we stand for this?”

There was more restless noise, growing louder.

“Nay, my friends,” Thor answered himself. “We are Asgard. We protect our walls, and defend our Kingdom.”

A few warriors made agreeable grunts and shouts, impatient hands gripping harder on the hilts of their swords.

Thor nodded, capitalising on the vibe. "Will we do nothing as we are made fools of? Or do we stand and fight the villain who dares threaten us?”

“We will stand!” called out a warrior. “We will fight!”

“For Asgard!” called another.

“Will you fight at my side, for Asgard and for Odin? And for Loki, son of Odin, my brother?" Thor asked boomingly, "Yay or nay?”

“Yay!” came dozens of bellowing cries. There was a hum of voices, and swords clanking and clashing.

Thor shot up his arm with a look of victory, wielding his hammer.

“We will fight for Asgard!” he hollered. “We will fight for Odin!”

“For Asgard!” the men roared back. “For Odin!”

“We will fight for Loki, my brother!”

“For Thor’s brother!”

Wild noise erupted below as the men prepared for battle. Thor left the balcony, hurrying to meet them.

“Good speech,” Tony said as Thor passed him, impressed.

Thor paused for a moment in his tracks. “Loki told me what things to say. He has always been better with words. It is a pity that my brother does not use his silver tongue to win favour from those who do not understand him.”

*

After Thor and his army had left to smoke out Doom from his hiding place, Tony wandered outside in his Iron Man suit, trying to motivate himself to do something; anything that would take his mind off things. He was having trouble forcing himself to think of the contest, though it was now the last day and he had two items still to complete.

It seemed almost irrelevant now, with only three contenders enmeshed in this horrible mess.

Then, he got a phone-call. Unbelievably, the HUD in his suit could take calls from Clint’s cell-phone. Tony answered.

“Barton?”

“No, Tony, it’s Bruce,” came Banner’s harried voice. “Where are you? Are you far away?”

Tony felt his heart quicken.

“Why? How’s Loki? Do you need me to be there?”

“He’s the same, but it’s not good. Look, the reason that I’m calling is that I think I’ve made a breakthrough with the antidote. But I need a specific ingredient. It’s kind of a tough one, and I need it right away.”

“I’ll get it,” said Tony. “What do you need?”

“You know that Loki nearly died from poisoning once before?” Banner asked. “Well, the poison was snake venom. The fact that he recovered from it means he’ll have formed a level of immunity. I think using venom from this same snake will complete what I've been working on here.”

The glimmer of hope made Tony frantic. He barked rather harshly at Banner,

“How the hell am I supposed to find a particular snake?”

Banner paused.

“You’ll be able to, trust me,” he said. “It’s a very big snake.”

*


	6. Chapter 6

The Avengers had a plan. It lacked structure and was far from perfect, but if it were done immediately and went smoothly, it just might work.

The plan was this:

Banner would remain at the castle to work on his antidote.

Natasha would keep watch outside Loki’s chambers and make sure that neither Doom nor his minions could come near in the event that they tried anything at the last minute.

Thor would spread his army over every corner of Asgard and also have another battalion waiting in Latveria, surrounding Doom’s castle lest he escape.

Tony would go to the waterfall at the end of a river called _Franangrsfors_ and destroy the snake that had once poisoned Loki, and would steal its venom.

That left Steve and Clint with empty hands.

Tony didn’t want to go alone, but the problem was transport. He was the only one who could fly. It just wasn’t going to work.

“It really sucks,” Tony said. “But I just have to go. Stay and help Natasha, I guess.”

“You could really use backup. There’s got to be a way, we just need to think,” Steve said unsurely.

“Thor could maybe give us a ride on his hammer,” Clint ventured, not sounding too thrilled at the thought.

Tony shook his head. “No. For whoever missed the memo, Thor’s leading an army against Doom to keep him from winning the contest. He’s busy.”

Clint looked surprised. “What, really? Doom’s still trying to marry Loki, even though he’s the one that did this, and Loki’s probably about to-”

"Clint, will you _please_ just shut your mouth!" Steve yelled, having reached the end of his tether. Clint shut right up.

“That’s what it looks like. If he can’t have him no one will, or some such bullshit," Tony muttered darkly. "I have to go. Wish me luck.”

He powered up the suit and lifted off the ground, but Clint jumped to his feet and waved for him to stop.

“Wait!” he yelped. “We can come with you! Just give me five minutes.”

Tony didn’t take his visor off, but he did take pause. He held up a number of fingers.

“You want to come? You’ve got two.”

*

Tony flew at a high speed over the river whose name he couldn’t pronounce. It glittered beneath him in the evening sun.

Not far behind him, hair in the wind, Clint and Steve soared after him, atop the back of Fred the Griffin.

Hawkeye was up front holding on, steering in the most unqualified possible way, but the Griffin seemed smart enough not to buck them off and followed Tony. Captain America looked more terrified than Tony had ever seen him in his life, and clutched tight onto Hawkeye like a damsel.

All three of them brandished jewel-encrusted swords, stolen from the treasure trove. Clint had his explosive time-release arrows and bow, and Steve had strapped on a machine-gun.

Tony heard the waterfall rushing before he saw it. He rose over tree-tops, and sighted it on the other side. They hovered above the surrounding greenery, searching out the snake.

It didn’t take long for them to find it.

“Holy shit,” Clint whistled, looking down through the trees.

The sinuous body was moving beneath the leaf canopy, twisting along the ground. Its girth was thick as a tree-trunk, all lean muscle and metal-dense scale. Thirty feet in length seemed like a fair estimate.

“Shit indeed,” Tony muttered. It was bigger than the dragon, and looked far more deadly.

Steve was still looking like he badly wanted to be down on land, whether it meant being devoured by a giant snake or not.

“I guess we just get down there and try to lay down as hard an offense as possible. And try not to get bitten,” he said.

“Or strangled. Or eaten,” added Clint.

Tony nodded. “We have to be careful not to puncture the venom sacs. Go easy around the head.”

“So. Count of three or something?” Clint asked as they stared down, watching the reptile writhe a path that seemed unending across the green forest floor.

The Griffin snapped it’s beak at something in the air. The riders bounced. Steve was turning green.

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this,” Steve said suddenly, in a cold sweat, “but Bruce heard from one of the healers about the time Loki was poisoned before by this snake. It’s a pretty horrible story. I’m not sure if you want to hear it.”

Given permission, Steve told Tony a short version of the story, over the course of about a minute.

Then Tony flew down, and hacked the thing to pieces.

*

The three Avengers destroyed the thirty-foot serpent in just under twenty minutes. Covered in fluid and guts, Tony searched for the venom sacs. Fred gnawed at the snake’s carcass.

“This is so disgusting,” Clint wheezed, wiping slime off his face.

“Yup,” Tony said, gingerly locating the soft spots behind the snake’s jaws.

Very carefully, he punctured the leathery skin with the curved knife he’d found in Loki’s room, and drained the poison fluid with a funnel into a seal-tight jar.

“I’m off. I’ll see you back at the castle,” he said as he put the jar carefully into a small leather satchel and strapped it across his shoulder. He switched on his suit and lifted off.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Clint called.

Steve glanced over at the Griffin, who was flapping its wings and worrying the snake’s tail in its beak.

“You guys go on without me," he sighed. "I think I’m going to walk.”

*

Tony hit down on the castle and brought the venom straight to Banner.

“What do you have to do with it?” he asked, producing the jar from the satchel. “How can I make this go faster?”

“All I need to do is pour it straight in,” Banner, that beautiful, beautiful genius said. “But we still need to hurry this up.”

They readied the potion and went upstairs. Banner had clearly taken over the chain of command with the healers and when he told them to go, they went. Even Frigga agreed to vacate the room, putting all her trust in them. Then it was just Tony and Bruce and-

“Oh God. Oh, _fuck_.”

For a second, Tony barely recognised him. The skin around Loki’s eyes was bruise-dark and the rest of him waxy pale. If not for the shallow little breaths he was taking, Tony would have thought he was dead already.

Tony uttered a lengthy string of curse words, which normally would have earned him some comment about how foul language was uncouth. As it was, Loki didn't even seem to notice he was there. The only reaction he gave was when Tony took one of his hands, and he broke into violent shivers.

“It's going to be okay," Tony promised, giving the hand a squeeze. A few thready tendrils of magic flickered back at him through the skin of Loki's palm. 

Banner looked a bit uncomfortable, as though intruding on a private moment. Tony eyeballed him and snapped his fingers impatiently. “Hey, you can gawk later. Let’s do this fast. Give it to me."

A moment later Tony was pulling out the stopper from the vial. Banner was making nervous little stop-and-start motions with his hands, like he wanted to do it himself but couldn’t bear the awkwardness of overruling Tony. He settled for watchful close instruction.

Tony took a wobbly breath. He held the vial up to Loki’s lips. “Okay,” he said. “Bottoms up.”

At the very last second, Banner stopped his hand.

“Wait! It’s...I’m sorry, but it’s very important that he drink all of it,” Banner exhaled, letting go of Tony’s wrist slowly. “We need to make sure that he’s able to swallow. See if you can get him to take a sip of water first.”

Tony agreed and did so. It dribbled out the sides of Loki’s mouth. Tony had to bite his lip to keep from screaming out of pure frustration.

He set about the task of coaxing Loki’s eyes open and getting him to understand what was happening enough to tip water into his mouth without him choking on it. 

“Come on, honey, please just fucking drink this,” he pleaded, as Loki coughed up a mouthful all over him. 

“He should be sitting up for this. I’ll hold him,” Banner volunteered. He climbed onto the edge of the bed and pulled Loki into a sitting position.

Loki’s head slumped onto Banner’s shoulder. He made a whimpering sound, and tucked his face into Banner’s neck. Banner looked a little flush-faced at the intimacy, and started talking louder than normal.

“Okay, Loki! Listen to Tony. He’s trying really hard to help you," Banner encouraged, awkwardly patting Loki's head.

It was easier to get Loki’s attention now that he was being propped up. His eyes opened a little, though they didn’t seem to be registering much of anything. Tony tried getting him to drink again with slightly better success. Some of the liquid went down Loki’s throat, but most of it still went down his chin.

They repeated this over and over. Tony had to slap him pretty hard once to keep him from passing out. At last the water seemed to revive him enough that Loki wrapped his hands around Tony’s on the cup, and drank the rest of it down.

Banner nodded to Tony sharply over Loki’s head. “Give it to him _now._ ”

Tony picked up the vial, trying not to let his hand shake. He cupped the back of Loki’s head, holding him firmly in place, and tipped the potion into his mouth.

Loki swallowed it down, and managed not to spill a single drop.

Tony gasped heavily. He hadn’t even realised how long he’d been holding his breath.

After just a minute, Loki started to relax a little. Tony sensed the tiny change and felt a shot of calm and serotonin wash through him.

Deciding he didn’t give a shit that Banner was two inches away and staring at him, Tony leaned in and kissed Loki on the forehead and stroked his hair and the back of his neck.

“You're gonna be okay now," he murmured, "Everything's gonna be fine."

Loki looked almost peaceful. He nuzzled into Banner’s neck and fell asleep.

*

Tony and Banner managed to get the sweat-soaked sheets off Loki’s bed, fresh blankets over him and (a Tony solo act) new pyjamas put on. At Banner's insistence, Tony wiped the sweat off him first. Loki slept through all of it, dead to the world. He was already looking much better.

Bruce hung around to monitor vitals, and keep Tony company. Tony felt bone-deep tired, but wouldn’t be sleeping until he was certain the antidote had worked.

Bruce held a thermometer under Loki’s tongue and waited for it to beep, for the third time in an hour. Tony thought Bruce had been acting rather motherly toward him, since their little cuddle.

Tony allowed his eyes to close for a second and then opened them again when the thermometer beeped. Banner extracted it carefully and put on his glasses to squint at it. “It’s down a full degree since last time,” he announced, “Looks like he's out of the woods.”

Tony sighed with deep relief. “Thank fuck.”

Bruce sighed too. He took his glasses off and rubbed them against his shirt-front.

“You were really great with him, you know. He’s lucky to have you,” he said thoughtfully. He gave Tony one of his gentle, crinkly-eyed smiles. “You're both very lucky.”

Loki's vitals continued to strengthen, and Banner eventually retreated to bed. Tony sat awake all night, marking every small improvement.

He took his sleeping boyfriend's hand. "You are a total jerk for putting me through all this, you know that?"

Loki scrunched his nose a little in response. Tony squeezed his hand and gently stroked a thumb over it.

It was only when Tony started to list in his chair and battle the weight of his eyelids that he decided it was time to crawl into bed. The sun had just begun to rise as he drifted off to sleep.

*

Tony woke just in time to find that Loki was also stirring. There was a little furrow of his brow, followed by the flutter of his eyelids. When he opened them, his blue-green eyes were clear and alert. They settled on Tony and a look passed between them.

If he weren’t so happy, Tony might have cried his fucking eyes out.

Loki then proceeded to struggle while Tony crawled all over him and determinedly kissed every square inch of his face and head, uncaring of the fact that he was being fought off like some kind of sex-molester by his own boyfriend, whose life he’d just saved. Then he checked Loki over head to toe, asking him if he felt pain anywhere, or needed water, food, more kisses, anything at all?

Loki tried half-heartedly to shove Tony off the bed, but was still too weak.

“Stop coddling, Stark! I do not need attending to. I am fine now, leave me be.”

“Not on your life, pal,” Tony said firmly, gripping him with both arms. “Every time I look the other way you get into mortal or ludicrous danger. I’m never leaving you alone again.”

Loki didn’t have too much fight in him and stopped protesting. They were both still thoroughly exhausted.

“You scared the living shit out of me, I'm sure you’ll be happy to know,” Tony shared candidly. “How are you feeling?”

“Like death.”

“You were poisoned. I think that’s the desired effect.”

Loki shuddered. “I _loathe_ poison. Remind me to use it on Doom.”

They cuddled, and started to drift back to sleep. Then Loki frowned suddenly and nudged him.

“How long have I been in this state?” he asked soberly. “How many days?”

“Three. Two and a half,” Tony counted, to his own surprise. It had felt both longer and shorter than that.

Loki’s eyes went wide with trepidation. Slowly he asked, “And what of the contest?”

Tony felt a cold wave of shock. He had forgotten all about it.

“Shit,” he said, sitting upright. “It’s over. Yesterday was the last day. I have no idea whether or not anyone won.”

Loki swallowed thickly. He looked a bit queasy. Tony handed him water.

“This would suggest to me that the victor most definitely was not you,” Loki observed, taking a shaky sip from the cup.

“Most definitely not.”

Loki drank the rest of the water in one long gulp. He took a pillow and covered his face with it to smother a groan of misery.

Tony gave Loki’s shoulder a sympathetic rub. He knew that he probably should be upset too, but he couldn’t really summon it. As long as he had Loki moaning and complaining and alive next to him, he figured that whatever the problem was, they’d be able to fix it eventually.

“Do you want me to go find out?” he asked.

Loki shook his head under the pillow. “Please, do not. Allow me the bliss of ignorance. I may have the rest of my life to know of it.”

Still with the pillow over his face, Loki made a floundering one-handed search of the mattress until he found one of Tony’s hands. Their fingers locked together and Tony snatched the pillow from him, tossing it away.

Tony reached out to comb a hand through Loki’s sweat-stiff, tangled hair, which stuck out at odd angles. Despite his best efforts, it refused to lay flat.

“I’ve just decided that today is your birthday. You said I could make one up,” Tony spoke the idea as it came into his head. He took in the incredulous look on Loki's face, which only made him like it even more. “So happy birthday.”

“I am not very happy.”

“Well I am, so suck it up. Next year I’ll throw you a party,” Tony said, getting visions of it already. “Parties I am very good at. Too bad those weren’t on your goddamn list.”

They turned over to one side so that Loki’s back was against Tony’s front and their hands were still together. Tony was slipping away in the warmth and calm.

“Thank you for saving my life, Stark,” Loki said quietly, just as Tony was closing his eyes.

They stayed like this for a while, both half-asleep, until a messenger arrived with the news.

The contest was finished. There had indeed been a victor.

Loki moaned into the pillows,

“Why didn’t you just let me die?"

*

The wedding of Thor Odinson to Loki Laufeyson was truly a joyous affair.

They married on the royal balcony as the subjects of Asgard all gathered below to watch and celebrate the matrimony of the two princes. No frippery was to be overlooked or extravagance spared in preparation of the Royal Wedding.

Five dozen white swans floated in the circular pool in the center of the courtyard, and bag after bag of fresh flower petals was released from the highest balconies, showering down on the crowd.

Hand-held Griffin-feather fans were tossed out to the onlookers, and those that were lucky enough to catch one would be able to show their children and grandchildren a souvenir of the day that the princes were wed.

On a high platform above the courtyard, Odin All-Father sat at his throne looking on grandly in his finest robes. Only if you were to look very closely into his single eye could you see how thoroughly depressed he was. Frigga maintained a look of pleasure and serenity beside him, and made sure that one of the guards was taking pictures.

The Avengers had been fitted in the finest of Asgardian formal-wear, decked out fantastically in velvet and lace and embroidery. It was the first time any of them had ever worn pantaloons or a ruff. Steve appeared a touch uncomfortable in his poufy pants and roundlet hat. Banner was adaptable; Tony and Clint strutted the look with enthusiasm. Natasha was lovely in a shimmery-blue bell-sleeved dress, her auburn locks pinned up with a sapphire tooth-comb that had been gifted to her by Frigga.

High above their heads on the balcony, just before the vows were to be taken, Thor and the crowd serenaded Loki (decidedly the bride) with the traditional Asgardian wedding song, backed by a symphony of Jorvik panpipe and cow-horn recorder. When it finished, Clint played a One Direction song on the rigged speaker-set, and Thor read out a clumsy poem.

The poem was very sweet. Tony might have welled up a little.

Thor and Loki stood facing one another. Thor looked jubilant in red velvet and gold satin robes and shining golden armour, thrilling off the cheers of the crowd. Loki wore green and gold, a variation on his regular armour but a bit fancier. He looked immaculate as always.

He remained his implacable self as the vows were being spoken, but knowing something of the way Loki’s mind worked, Tony could hear him grinding his teeth from thirty feet away.

When the vows were sealed, rather than kissing, Thor lifted Loki up and bear-hugged him to glorious applause. The trickster resignedly allowed himself to be manhandled and cuddled and swung to and fro, then pelted with bushels of flowers, to which he was allergic. 

Loki spent his wedding night with Tony, eyes streaming pollen-induced tears.

“Stop sneezing,” said Tony impatiently. “I’m trying to kiss you. Your wedding was really romantic.”

Not cooperating, Loki rolled further away from him and said “Rrrrrrrgh” into his hands, clearly not wanting to be kissed.

They were in Loki’s room together in bed, still dressed in their formal Asgardian wedding-attire. Tony had a buzz on from the many flagons of celebratory mead he’d partaken in and was feeling surprisingly chipper for someone who’d just watched his boyfriend get married.

“Does this make you a cuckold?” he asked, looking down at Loki sprawled out next to him. “Or am I cuckolding you?”

“I am not sure,” Loki said into the pillows on which he lay face down. “But either way, I will be allowing  no such thing until tomorrow at best.”

Tony tried poking him. “Aww, come on! Isn’t it customary to consummate on the wedding night? I’m pretty sure Thor will be.”

When they had slipped out of the banquet hall the Thunder God was still at the head of the table at his wedding feast, merrily intoxicated and surrounded by a dozen fair maidens, all of whom wanted to personally wish him a most long and happy marriage.

“Do not speak to me of Thor. He has ruined me. After this day I may never want for a marital touch, ever again.”

“Methinks you’re being a tad overdramatic, Mrs. Odinson. All he did was cuddle you over and over.”

Loki gave him an annoyed look and then sneezed violently into the pillows.

Tony chuckled and slung an arm around him.

“You’re so cute,” he said. “One of these days, I might have to marry you myself.”

*

The divorce of Thor Odinson to Loki Laufeyson two months later was also cause for a great celebration.

On their second trip to Asgard, Thor announced from the balcony that his brother had found true love with the mortal hero Tony Stark, and all of Asgard cheered long and hard for them. It seemed that any excuse for a party was to be considered a fine thing. A feast was declared, and Tony sat at the royal table between Loki and Thor and was toasted over and over again until he blacked out.

When he woke up he was in Loki’s chambers in bed, far, far away from the banquet hall. He sat up moaning and clutching his forehead.

“God. Ow. I hate mead. I love mead, but Good God.”

He looked around and saw terrible evidence of the night before. A mirror was broken and the shelf table that housed some of Loki’s trinkets had obviously been turned over and then put upright again, not exactly as it been before. A spot on the floor had clearly been mopped and Tony didn’t want to know why.

He’d also had his clothes removed and was under the blankets. Beside the bed, there was water and an empty vial of sleeping draught. The data told him that he’d at least been looked after.

“Christ,” Tony sighed, rubbing his eyes to blot out the pain and the sight of the destruction. “I’ll apologize later. Please tell me your healers do headaches.”

“The small dish beside you,” Loki told him, from where he was splayed elegantly in a chair across the room fully dressed, tipping his book to one side to show Tony his face. “It has an ointment. Rub it at the sides of your brow. Not much; you are wearing some already.”

Tony rubbed the spicy-smelling salve all over his temples. He drained the glass of water next to him and poured another from the pitcher. He drank another full glass, then let out a shuddery sigh.

“Man. I feel like I’m about to keel,” he groaned tiredly.

“I would not worry about dying just yet. Here,” Loki said, making Tony catch, “Have an apple.”

Tony took a bite of it. It did make him feel somewhat better.

He supposed he would have to ask. “So. Did I thoroughly embarrass myself in front of the royal family and the entire kingdom?”

Loki didn’t quite shake his head, but it was implicit in the gesture as he spread his arms out and put his book down on the table.

“You are in Asgard, Stark. No one is ever embarrassed, perhaps save my father on occasion. And he certainly not by you.”

Tony nodded in faint relief and looked around the room again. He thought of the miles of hallway and steep winding staircases between here and the banquet hall.

“Did Thor have to carry me up here?” he asked.

Loki’s even expression managed to remain both perfectly passive and smug at the same time. “He did not.”

“Oh…you-?”

“Yes, Stark. Kicking and singing all the way.”

Tony lay back and stared at the ceiling to envision it. He doubted that Loki could see him smile to himself.

“Loki?”

“Mm?”

“You complete me,” Tony quoted from _'Jerry MaGuire'_.

Loki didn’t get it.

*

That afternoon, Thor took Loki and Tony aside. He had allowed them some space the night before, after the announcement. But now it was time to talk.

“You are released from our bonds now, Loki,” Thor said, patting the trickster on the back. “Though I shall continue to uphold our vows of love and obedience to one another, and hope that you will think on them as well.”

Thor then pulled him into a bone-crushing embrace, slamming Loki's head against his metal breast-plate. Loki winced at the blow to the face.

“Thank you, brother,” Loki said in a muffled voice into Thor’s chest. He wriggled around until his cheek was pressed against his brother’s shoulder and he could breathe again. Awkwardly he lifted his pinned arms as high as he could and held them around Thor’s waist. “I will try.”

Thor nodded into Loki’s hair, and though he was out of his sibling's line of sight, Tony could see his lip wobble a little.

Releasing his brother a bit unwillingly, Thor’s face stiffened and he turned to Tony. He placed his large hands on both of Tony’s shoulders. Intently, Thor stared at him.

“Loki is yours once more, as promised. You will marry my brother now, Stark, and look after him.”

Tony shifted a little, still locked in Thor’s grip. Thor continued to examine him.

“Well…”

Thor frowned. “Yes, my friend. You will.”

Tony glanced over at Loki, who appeared to be experiencing a very sharp headache.

“Sure,” Tony shrugged, after a moment. “Sounds good. Why wouldn’t I?"

Thor smiled in satisfaction, and slapped Tony on the back hard enough that he nearly fell over. "Congratulations! We shall welcome you to the family with a feast!"

Tony didn't mention that they'd done exactly that the night before, because Thor was already walking off to go plan it. Loki muttered in exasperation at his departing brother's back, but Tony thought he might have looked secretly pleased.

*

They had decided to take a last walk across the fields past the orchards. The next morning they would return home, and maybe this would all be behind them. There was one last thing that Tony still felt should be discussed.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to mention to you,” he said as they strolled through the long grass. “About when I went to the Land of the Trolls.”

From the shadow that passed over the trickster’s face, he could tell that Loki had already guessed it.

“You visited more than just the Trolls, I take it?” Loki asked in a measured tone.

“Yeah. I found your castle. And your, um… torture chamber?”

Loki slowed his steps, lagging a moment behind. He gave  a small unhappy shrug. "I was quite thoroughly mad at the time, as you may know. My banishment came off the back of several distressing experiences, one of which involved poisoning by snake venom."

Tony nodded. “I figured you weren’t quite right in the head at the time.”

“I was not. Thinking on it now I find it all a bit horrifying myself. But there is little I can do to change it.”

Tony shook his head in disagreement. "But there is. Help save lives. That's what being an Avenger is all about. It's how we all cope with the wrong things we've done."

"You think it that easy, do you?”

“Not easy,” Tony rolled his eyes upward, “As if things with you are ever easy. I just mean that all you can do to make up for the bad is to do good. So just keep doing it.”

Loki stopped walking, and looked down at the grass.

“What of you and I then?" he asked. "Will you be able to look at me now without doubt in your heart?”

Tony gave the question about three seconds of sincere thought. Then he took a wide step, pulling Loki close to him and said, "Don't be an idiot."

He moved back far enough so that they could look at each other. He waited until Loki met eyes with him.

“I have two things in my heart,” Tony said to him. “Shrapnel, and you. That is a line from my epic poem, by the way. And I don’t have any doubts.”

Loki looked very touched. He let himself be hugged again and rested his chin on Tony’s shoulder. “I would like to hear the rest of your poem sometime, Stark.”

“Oh, you will. I didn’t spend six hours writing that baby for nothing.”

“So all is forgiven then?” Loki asked a bit tentatively.

“Yeah. It’s in the past,” Tony assured him. “Just do me a favor and don’t ever offer to decorate the living room. I don’t think Steve would like looking at a pile of skulls in the corner.”

Loki pulled back from him. He looked puzzled. “Skulls?”

“Yeah,” Tony nodded. When Loki just kept looking at him oddly, he clarified, “The pile of skulls. And the skeletons. And the possibly-human heart.”

Loki broke free of the hug.

“I did not have skulls. One or two perhaps, but not any significant amount,” Loki said in bewilderment. “Are you sure that is what they were?”

Tony answered slowly, with caution. “Definitely.”

Loki continued to look confused for a moment. Then his eyes bloomed with realization and went huge, wounded and aghast.

“Those were not mine!” he shrieked indignantly. “Someone else must have inhabited my castle after I vacated it! It has been abandoned for centuries! Anyone could have been there since! Any number of villains!”

Tony saw his error, far too late of course. Loki saw the mental mathematics going on, and his expression went thoroughly furious.

“So that is what you think of me, then?” he spat out. “A lunatic who murders for fun with no end game, no purpose? You think me that _low?_ ”

“No…” Tony began weakly. “That’s not what I said. I just thought-”

But Loki was already in the midst of a full-on rant. "I did not go about murdering everything that walked through the door, you know!”

“But… torture chamber!” Tony stammered. “You agreed with torture chamber!”

“Those were my devices, yes, I used them on my enemies! But rarely did I take it upon myself to kill guests simply for amusement’s sake! What sort of fiend do you think I am!"

“But honey, you _did_ do that thing with the Chitauri that time, and a lot of people _did_ -”

Loki rolled his eyes. "Oh, so we are bringing up that again! We have talked about that, I have said I was sorry! But that is still different, there were reasons behind it!"

Tony was deeply regretting not keeping his mouth shut. There were miles of field between him and the castle, and no other respite in sight.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” he moaned. “I really am. My bad.”

Loki stared at him for a good long moment, chewing his lip.

Then he walked across the field and stomped around a little. Tony made no move to stop him. After a few minutes of angrily muttering to himself Loki came back looking tight-lipped but mostly composed.

“All right. Fine,” Loki huffed. “I can imagine how it must have looked. And I suppose, come to think, that the heart was in fact mine. But it was not human, nor Aesir.”

“Okay,” sighed Tony gratefully," I’m incredibly glad we’ve cleared this up. And I am sorry for thinking that about you.”

Loki seemed to accept this as the truth, and Tony felt very relieved.

“I just wasn’t sure what to think,” he said as an afterthought. “You haven’t told me much about your past.”

Loki looked uncomfortable. “You have not asked.”

That seemed as good an invitation as any. At some point in the near future, Tony would take him up on it.

With a renewed sense of trust and some truth out in the open, Tony thought it best to start walking.

“Come on,” he called out, striding through the knee-length grass without waiting for Loki to follow him, but knowing that he would. “It’s getting dark out. We’ll talk about the rest of it at home.”

*

It was time to return to Midgard. Everyone was a little happy, and a little sad.

Clint said an emotional goodbye to Fred, who nuzzled him and licked his hand, then flew up suddenly to chomp a bird out of the sky.

They said their farewells to the Warriors Three and the Lady Sif, who promised to write to Natasha. Clint, Thor and the Warriors shared a moment of Bromance, and promised to visit again soon. Loki didn’t even squirm too much when he was squashed in a hug by Volstagg.

Odin said stoic goodbyes to his sons and looked at his shoes while Frigga lovingly attacked them. She was kissing and hugging Loki and Thor as if hanging on for dear life, and it seemed for a short time that she might have to be dragged off of them.

Then she called a guard over and requested that a group picture be taken. The Avengers gathered together with the King and Queen and their warrior friends, and were snapped a few times to make sure no one looked fat or was blinking. Frigga promised to send them a copy, somehow or other.

As they piled their luggage up (along with many crates of golden apples, for reasons that Tony would probably have to look into sooner or later), Frigga spotted Tony, and walked over to give him a hug.

“You will make a good match for my son. But you must promise to keep him out of trouble,” Frigga said confidentially, kissing Tony on the cheek. Tony felt good, and laughed and smiled at this, but sure as hell didn’t make any promises.

The people of Asgard watched their princes depart from the Bifrost. They hoped for their safety, and swore that whenever they did return home, both would be protected with the very lives of any men fit enough to be called proud warriors of Asgard.

Especially Prince Loki, who was delicate, apparently. He they would defend to their very last breath-

Whether they liked him or not.

*

The next week they went to Latveria and gave Doctor Doom a sound thrashing. They wiped the floor with him so thoroughly that they managed to force him into signing a written apology to planet Earth, and also one to Asgard. The letter was printed in The New Yorker and The Guardian and every other major world newspaper. It even headlined the front page of The Latverian Times. It made for some very good press.

Reporters were gathered outside the mansion when they returned home. Steve made a short press statement, promising that Doom wouldn’t be causing any more trouble (for a while at least).

There were also civilians mixed in with the journalists, and two teenage girls were holding out teddy bears that wore little hand-made horned helmets and green capes. They ran up to the front of the crowd and offered them to Loki.

Loki took both of them and held them awkwardly.

“Thank you,” he said, a bit bewildered. The girls nearly swooned at the sound of his voice.

“You’re our favorite Avenger,” one of the girls told him, blushing and puppy-eyed.

The other girl whispered something into her friend’s ear, and the two of them shared a brief giggling session. One of them turned and tried unsuccessfully to maintain a straight face.

“You just beat Doctor Doom,” she stated to Loki, and let it hang.

“Yes,” Loki answered, to more giggles.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” One girl asked devilishly. “Like, _an important Asgardian custom?_ ”

Her friend chipped in by adding, “Hasn’t it been, y’know… _a great victory?_ ”

The girls were staring like they might pull an eye-muscle by looking at Loki any harder.

Loki frowned in consideration.

“Ah. Yes,” he admitted. “A great victory indeed.”

Loki turned around to address the Avengers.

“Teammates,” he implored grandly. “Who would like the first kiss?”

“I’ll go first!” Clint raised his hand, puckering up girlishly.

“Very well,” Loki nodded.

The trickster glanced discreetly over at Tony and quirked an eyebrow at him, letting a glint of amusement show.

Tony bit back a chuckle and shook his head, motioning Loki onward to where Clint was making kissy faces.

“I’ll go last,” Tony called to him.

Loki looked over again, eyes full of thought.

“Yes,” he agreed, and went ahead to carry out the deed.

 

*

FIN.


	7. Chapter 7

When Tony emerged upstairs after an hour of peace and good work in his lab, there was disaster in the kitchen. Flour and icing sugar dusted the floor and the counter in drifts, and smears of butter and sticky egg whites and shells littered the various surfaces.

Loki was wearing oven mitts. He had flour on his armour, and streaked across one of his cheeks. At the sight of Tony, he smiled brightly.

“Ah, good, you are here. I have cooked. This is not something I do, so you would do well to appreciate it. Here is your dinner. It is called Apple Strudel.”

Tony looked down. Seated on a dinner plate, piping-hot, was the discussed pastry. It did in fact look very well-prepared.

Loki was staring at him.

Tony looked back at the plate. “Uh, thank you. I… don’t know what to say.”

“Simply eat it, then. I have read it is delicious. It is German, and quite the delicacy so I am told. Also I have hand-made the pastry.”

Loki thrust a fork at him. In bewilderment, Tony finally broke down.

“Okay, this is getting weird! What’s with you and the apples? I keep forgetting to ask Thor!”

He was prepared for a huffy reaction, but Loki just lowered his voice and looked sly.

“Tell me, how would you feel about eternal life, Stark?”

Not for the first time in the better part of a year, Tony wondered what he had gotten himself into.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb.

“Eternal life?” he said. “With you, my darling? We’d find a way to kill each other before the turn of the century.”

“That is not a very nice thing to say, I am trying to share something with you,” Loki reproved him, looking doe-eyed and wounded. “You do not need to be hurtful.”

Loki then sat down at the table with his arms folded in a genuine sulk. Tony pulled out the chair beside him.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m joking.”

Loki scooted around in his seat to face the other way, turning his back to Tony. His voice was primly clipped. “I do not wish to speak to you.”

Tony tried craning around Loki’s shoulder and was once again rebuffed.

“Oh come on!” Tony said in frustration. “You can’t be mad at me about this! You’re the one who’s been tricking me into spending eternity with you without even asking first!”

He touched Loki’s shoulder and was forcefully shrugged off. 

Knowing he would never win, Tony sighed long-sufferingly.

“Oh, fine,” he grunted. “Will it make you happy if I eat the damn strudel?”

Loki sniffed, and nodded. He turned around again slowly in Tony’s direction.

Tony grumbled and picked up the fork.

Loki was right, at least- the pastry was delicious. They sat in relative silence, and after a moment Loki took up a fork himself.

“This is really good,” Tony admitted. “I’m going to bear in mind that you can cook.”

Loki smiled furtively behind a forkful of cinnamon-glazed apple. “I think I have outdone myself. You must not tell anyone, though. I do not wish to be reputed for it.”

“I’ll take it to my grave,” Tony promised him, chewing, and added, “If I’m ever allowed to have one, that is. So, what do you want to do after this?”

The two of them relaxed and forgot about forever, discussing tonight instead. They picked away at the plate with their forks until they finished the whole damn strudel.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but sweet. Like the Shawarma scene, but with Strudel. 
> 
> X.
> 
> and: 
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://www.flickr.com/photos/79058120@N03/7503375330/)  
> 
> 
> Amazingly adorable fan art by the wonderful, talented Alexzoe!
> 
> Check out her art here: 
> 
>   [http://alexzoe.deviantart.com](http://alexzoe.deviantart.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> And this beautiful gorgeous thing here: 
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://www.flickr.com/photos/79058120@N03/8023109692/)  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Lovely fanart by Lis, [Click here for larger viewing!](http://www.flickr.com/photos/79058120@N03/8023109692/)
> 
> And from the brilliant Berende, whose talents have brought me so much joy:
> 
> [  
> Doomed Love](https://berende.deviantart.com/art/Doomed-Love-604337423) by [Berende](https://berende.deviantart.com/)
> 
>  
> 
>  
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>  


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